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The Scriptures of the Church of VirtualityReality 00
The Scriptures of the Church of Virtuality\Reality
Version 2.0 - The "Rush Job" Edition
scripture.000 this file - prefatory material
scripture.001 introduction to the basics of v\r
scripture.002 miscellaneous ideas and short pieces
scripture.003 general theme: the net
scripture.004 general theme: altered states of consciousness
scripture.005 Qix sees the world; "Diary of a Net Fiend"
scripture.006 countdown to AO v1.0; early CafeNet material from Pippin
scripture.007 transcription of insomniac tape by Qix, and Usenet stuff
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Hello World.
My name is Pippin. Not my real name of course. About a year ago, i
started MUDing. This was probably not a good idea, because i suffered severe
sensory overload, and basically fried my brain, and got excluded from uni.
On the trail of my sanity, i found a round Tuit. i discovered doing
the things that i always wanted to do but never got around to doing. One of
those things was writing down all these THOUGHTS that had come to live in
my mind. And my friend said, hey we have a Religion here. so the Jottings,
the map of my mind, are here with some additions from friends and other people
that i don't even know. These are the Travelling Scriptures of the Church
of V\R.
The Scriptures are a living growing body, organism of thoughts. This
document may, in whole or in part, be copied, photocopied, reproduced,
translated, or reduced to any electronic or machine or human readable, or
printed and posted in any postal system. But the Church of V\R and Gaia2000
retain the right to make any money out of this document. We gotta eat somehow.
Anyone wishing to contribute to the feeding of these arrogant little bastards
can email me at: larysa.fabok@bbs.oit.unc.edu or if you are ever passing
Nambour, Australia way drop me a line on (074) 411 053 for the THOUGHTS need
company and like to be talked to. And your thoughts can join our thoughts
in the Grand Growing Body of the Church of V\R. *slosh*
So C U in Cyberspace someday. I still MUD as Pippin.
*wave*
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WHAT TO DO WITH THESE SCRIPTURES
There is every chance that you are reading a copy of a copy of... the original
Scriptures of V/R. They may well have been added to, compressed, decompressed,
edited, etc. This is OK. BUT: it will help the scholars of the future, when
they try to understand what happened to Planet Earth in the 1990s, to
distinguish the different editions of V/R floating around. Something somewhere
should indicate which edition this is that you are reading. If you make any
additions or amendments, please alter the edition name - to something that is
not likely to be duplicated by someone else. FOR EXAMPLE: The version you are
reading may say, "Scriptures Version 1.1". If you add some of your own work to
it, *don't* call the new version "Scriptures Version 1.2". Call it something
like "Traveling Scriptures of Church of V/R, Greg's Edition B" or "V/R
Scriptures, Version 3.14159 [from the disk of Vanessa]" or "Count Zero's Newly
Amended and Expanded Concordance on Virtuality/Reality" or *anything* that
will help the archaeologists of the 21st century to differentiate between the
billions of different editions they will have on their hands.
Also: Snail-mail contributions, communiques, etc intended for the Church
can be sent to:
The Elder Gods
c/o PO Box 1620
Toowong, Q 4066
Australia
As of this writing we don't have a stable email address, but you might try
Larysa.Fabok@launchpad.unc.edu (but don't expect a reply within 12 months).
In particular, try to send us a copy of anything you add to the Scriptures.
Of course, if you're creative enough, you may decide that you don't want to
attach everything you come up with to the V/R mythos - that's OK. Start your
own religion. We'd still like to hear from you anyway. If you are so inspired,
you might mention our address somewhere in what you write.
Start a zine serializing your favourite parts of Scripture - this could be a
way to make quick $. Send copies and instructions to your favourite
celebrities and media personalities. Start a discussion group on V/R. Form
your own GAIA 2000 cabal and plot to take over your country/street/whatever.
IF you're on a network of some sort: keep your copy of the Scriptures in a
Scriptures subdirectory. Quote the Scriptures in your .sig, and mention both
the snail-mail address of the Elder Gods and an ftp site where the Scriptures
are kept. Try to get the Scriptures installed on every ftp site you can, and
maintain a list of people and places you know have heard of the Church of
Virtuality/Reality in some form. Start discussion areas on bbs's related to
V/R and GAIA 2000 and other such topics. Start Usenet newsgroups (example:
alt.religion.virtuality_reality or alt.religion.v_r, alt.gaia2000,
alt.fan.abulafia, alt.fan.dave.who.is.god). Assemble some gif's you think
might be eye-catching and relevant. Get V/R-related discussions going on your
newsgroups with local distribution (eg qut.chat, ky.misc, etc) - there will
always be people who haven't heard.
ALSO IF YOU'RE ON A NETWORK: Show as many of your non-net friends as possible
the wonders of networked computing. If you have the means, do something like
getting them into a real-time conversation with someone on the other side of
the planet. In short, *get them as hooked as you are*. The more people are
clamoring for net access, the more enterprises like CafeNet, BBS networks,
networks, SF NET, public Communications Centres, etc, are likely to take off.
Think of it this way: we're trying to reach everyone on Earth by December 2000
*at the latest* - and trying to get contributions from them - meaning
primarily intellectual contributions, although financial ones won't go astray.
Remember, these Scriptures are meant to be interactive - so while it's fine to
copy them and evangelize, it's just as important to *add something yourself* -
your Stray Thoughts - you could even write a searing critique of the nature
and intentions of V/R! Your informed criticism could be the one thing that
stops the juggernaut, or at least gives it a sense of direction.
We anticipate that techno culture will crossbreed with net culture, so: get
people to display gifs of V/R, Kibo, "Bob", etc at rave light-shows... write
some rap lyrics about us and put them in the public domain somehow... Etc.
!!!IMPORTANT!!! - *try to avoid reliance on what already exists*. If V/R makes
sense to you then you may get some enjoyment out of mentioning it to others,
propagandizing, making "in-jokes", etc, but this should soon turn stale. We
are trying to inform you and get you moving if you're not already doing so;
the best thing you can do is create, criticize... don't just consume! It would
be great to discover people taking V/R or V/R-inspired concepts in directions
we couldn't even imagine.
By the time you read this version it may have grown to an intimidatingly huge
size. Don't worry that anything you write will be lost, or that you cannot
hope to equal the standard already set. We have faith in you!
Qix
HOW TO READ THE SCRIPTURES OF V/R
Better understanding may perhaps be reached with the help of MUD or LSD.
i) If you're running a MUD try installing a miniature version of the
Scriptures somewhere that people will read it. The concept of `virtuality'
will make sense much more quickly if encountered that way. A good starting
point is /abul/sthought.doc.
ii) Reading the Scriptures in the course of a trip may help clarify those
`hard-to-understand' parts.
Qix II
BECOMING A REGISTERED READER
You too can become a registered reader of the Travelling Scriptures of the
Church of V/R! Just send us something between $5 and $500 Australian and
we'll send you a little card saying `I am a registered reader', or something
like that. We might even send you something extra...
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Message-ID: <920912.145918.SAT.FACN34B@SAUPM00.BITNET>
From: FACN34B@SAUPM00.BITNET (zane of dhahran)
Date: 12 Sep 92 14:00:14 GMT
Sender: CHRISTIA@ASUACAD
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For a little more discussion, here is an interesting quote from _The Teachings
of the Holy Orthodox Church_, by Rev. Michael Azkoul, Ph.D. published by
Dormition Skete in 1986:
"The New Testament is not the only "scriptures." The nineteenth century Russian
Orthodox philosopher, Alexi Khomiadov (1804 - 1860), was right when he wrote
that there "are no limits to our Scripture and every writing which the Church
acknowledges as Her own is Holy Scripture. Such pre-eminently are the Creeds
of the General Councils...wherefore the writing of Holy Scriptures has con-
tinued to our day, and if God pleases, yet more will be written." p.12 ibid.
So maybe we need to define what we mean by Scriptures?
Most of all, I hope that the living letters continue to be written...that is,
I hope we are all striving through the Power that dwells in us to live holy
lives. This is the only Book that some will read. It is the sign instituted
by the Lord so that the world may come to a knowledge of Him.
Peace in Christ, the Living Word, zane.
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this index comes from an earlier edition that was circulated on a single
floppy. the contents of directories bookworm, black and hack have been removed
from this edition, and more recent material can be found in scripture.005 and
scripture.006. -Qix
INDEX TO SCRIPTURES - Edition "Jack" - Version 1.4
README - contains messages from Pippin, Qix, and zane of dhahran (sorry zane!)
script.arj - Compressed version of an early draft.
scriptar.Z - Scriptures available via ftp as "script.tar.Z" as of 19-09-92.
\PIP = by Pippin
\pip\rave\reality.doc The Grand High Aromaress's original discourse.
\purple.doc Stray Thoughts in the course of a month.
\house.doc The house of silence within you.
\diary.doc The nature of diaries.
\puppy.doc The puppy self.
\poetry.doc The nature of poetry.
\quest.doc Rave about Words.
\sleep.doc Rave about sleep.
\depress.txt Rave about depression.
\blue.rav Rave about the blues.
\truth.rav The nature of truth.
\cspace.rav Rave about cyberspace.
\rave.bat Makes a single file containing \pip\rave.
\pip\poems\alone.poe Poem on solitude.
\dark.poe Poem on the dark.
\grey.poe Quote on greyness.
\madness.poe Poem on madness.
\diode.poe Dreamweaver.
\life.poe Poem.
\mud.poe Poem on MUD.
\cliff.poe Meditation on solitude.
\rok.poe Proem on a rock.
\sun.poe Quote on Queensland.
\pig.poe Ode to the pig.
\rain.rav Rave on rain.
\pip\mint\reveg.doc Outback revegetation project.
\utopia.doc The true story of Pippin's computer addiction.
\mint.bat Makes single file containing .doc's.
\cafe1 Historical document, CafeNet.
\cafe2 Historical document, CafeNet.
\pip\cloud\bits.not Ideaettes.
\conshus.not Consciousness.
\longevit.not Longevity ideaette.
\chat.not Stream-of-conversation.
\babel.not Idea for a story.
\gaia.not Stream-of-conversation.
\amnesia.ide Idea for a story.
\roaches.ide Idea for a story.
\false.txt Creating the devil.
\cloud.bat Makes single file containing \pip\cloud.
\QIX = by Qix
\qix\vslashr.txt What *is* this all about?
\ksundeen.txt The War on Drugs and the end of history.
\gaia2000.txt What is GAIA 2000?
\alphomeg.txt On "Alpha and Omega".
\qanda.txt Question concerning "Alpha and Omega".
\t15.txt "Bob", V/R, CNN, Internet, and the Apocalypse.
\prophecy.txt Prophecy concerning the future of V/R.
\essay86.txt "We Created the World".
\bent.rav Transcript of taped 1990 conversation.
\t6.txt Account of a trip (from alt.drugs).
\ABUL = by Abulafia
\abul\sthought.doc The Profit of Cynicism's original discourse.
\mulber.doc The Great Mulberry Depression.
\musical.rav What is religion for? What is *this* one for?
\ABRA = by Abraxas
\abra\me.poe Poem.
\cosmic.doc Story of Qix and Velax.
\stories\gordon.sty Story: "Biochip Dreaming". [Pippin]
\angie.sty Story: "The Dreamcrackers". [Pippin]
\redgum.sty Story: "The Sentience of Redgum". [Pippin]
\pandanus.sty Story: "Pandanus Dreaming". [Pippin]
\bill.sty Story: Bill in the afterlife. [Pippin]
\dave.sty Story: "Dave's Reality Model". [Pippin]
\daniel.sty Story: "Daniel and the Library". [Pippin]
\sty.bat Makes a single file of all but 1999.sty.
\1999.sty Story: "1999". [Qix]
\VOL2 - will appear in second volume of printed Scriptures.
\vol2\qix\aya Communications concerning the "vision vine".
\4aug91.txt Worldview as at 4 August 1991.
\91ttd.txt Agenda for 1991.
\aboutvr On various aspects of V/R and GAIA 2000.
\biblio Qix's Recommended Reading List.
\semper Qix travels the world (article from Semper).
\qixatuq.not Qix at UQ (notes).
\cvrmisc Miscellanea concerning V/R and GAIA 2000.
\qix92.not Qix in '92 (notes).
\BOOKWORM - These files have to do with a bookworm picture that appeared in
the very first bound hard copy of the Scriptures.
\bookworm\bookworm.cdr
\bookworm.prn
\bookworm.wpg
\BLACK = by Bob Black
\black\work.not Bob Black's essay, "The Abolition of Work".
\HACK = by Anon
\hack\0014.fil Toll-free numbers, etc.
\pizza.cob The obligatory COBOL assignment.
(see \qix\vslashr.txt)
\badeggs Mysterious file uploaded to CVR BBS one day.
<<<<<<<<<<<<"/copyrite" files missing from this disk!>>>>>>>>>>>>
Copy of q.exe editor thrown in at no extra cost.
Version 1.1 - 9 Sept 1992
Version 1.2 - 0014.fil, pizza.cob, pyth, birthr added - 13 Sept 1992
Version 1.3 - r.bat, \copyrite removed; readme1, badeggs added - 16 Sept 1992
false.txt, rain.rav added - 16 Sept 1992
\cafenet created - 17 Sept 1992
Version 1.4 - \bookworm added - cafe1, cafe2 moved - \vol2\qix moved -
scriptar.Z introduced - corrected versions of \pip, \qix
files introduced - 19 Sept 1992
\abulafia\sthought.doc
\pippin\rave\reality.doc
\abulafia\relig.rav
\qix\vslashr.txt
\abulafia\mulber.doc
\pippin\rave\depress.txt
\pippin\rave\quest.doc
\pippin\rave\purple.doc
\pippin\mint\utopia.doc
\abulafia\sthought.doc
Vol. 1., April 25 1992,
Printed in CyberSpace.
The Scriptures of the Un-Dead
a journey into the church of VIRTUALITY/REALITY
ABULAFIA J. PURPLEFLOWER -THE PROFIT OF CYNICISM
In the beginning there was the ugylidig
... and then from the MUD, life was born
On a Wednesday, mid March '92, four silly people decided to see what would
happen if they took their minds at warp speed without a seatbelt. An innocent
enough exercise, each individual having equally valid, if not bizarre reasons
for their trek into obscurity, each individual returning from the abyss with
the consolidated insight and enthusiasm of the elder gods, and with a piece of
each other. And so the "oh so mutually enlightened ones- Qix, Pippin, Flesh
and Abulafia" began to delve into the abstractions of reality and their own
virtualities and realising the future of man lay in panspace, and cyberspace
set out upon a quest to guide the inhabitants of the planet towards themselves
and towards the future before we all implode.
Here is their story ......
"In the beginning there was the ugyldig
...and then from the MUD, life was born,
and the church of Virtuality/Reality came into being"
virtuality is the way that an individual perceives reality. Each virtuality
is unique, an extension of the psyche.
reality is everyone's collective virtualities. Without the individual
virtualities reality gets warped.
"Mr_Society" has for centuries dictated the basis of reality and those whose
virtualities did not conform with the 'standard government issue reality'
were outcast, thrust onto the fringe of humanity. With recent socio-political
changes occuring around the globe (The fall of communism, the greening of the
earth and previously concrete-grey politics) "Mr_Society" is having to seriously
rethink its bastardous attitudes of the past . We are entering a new era.
A time of global awareness, integral awareness, individual awareness.
We are being forced to re-evaluate everything we have blindly believed, question
everything that we have been taught, look for our essence which just wandered
away during the commercials. We know we're not real.... Do you?
When you walk along the street, whose mind are you in?
When you're riding the "Dream Express" whose dream are you in?
When you rub the tally-ho's whose thoughts are you in?
Don't touch that dial !
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA:
"Everything rose from the ugyldig, to whence it shall one day return."
The ugylig is the nothingness from which life itself is constructed.
It is the void where nothing exists but everything has the potential to exist.
It is potential energy. The beginnings of an idea rise from the ugyldig.
When an idea is in it's most fundamental state we reach into the ugyldig with
our minds, and provide the sperm, releasing enough kinetic energy to transform
the idea egg into embryonic form. The embryonic idea is nurtured and fed by
the mind until it develops into an ideaette and then finally gathers enough
energy to cast itself from the ugylig at high speed into the right frontal
cortex of the brain yelling "i am idea, hear me gargle..."
When we are struck with such occurances, the usual response is "oh i've
been hit by inspiration". But that is not true. You have been hit by a psychotic
ideaette travelling at high speed and yelling "i am idea. hear me gargle..."
Some people are of course more receptive to these processed than others.
These people usually have their own virtualities and need not concern
themselves with with passages of inhibition or cleaning their back teeth.
When an idea is born, some people will look at it and say "oh what an ugly
little idea - i want nothing to do with it " upon which they will promptly
lock it away in the deep caverns of their minds never to see the light of day.
Everyone has lots of ideas, the ones they consider of value and importance to
themselves, they keep and nurture, the others they neglect. It does not
necessarily follow that an idea holding no value to one particular person,
will not hold any value for another individual. It was with this idea in mind
that the "Garbage bin of Thought (c) " was designed. The "Garbage bin of
Thought (c) " is a huge green plastic bin placed strategically just outside
of the door of the birthing room in the ugyldig. People are free to cast
unwanted ideas into the bin, or to rummage through and claim an idea as
their own.
There is always the possibility that two or more minds will be rummaging
through the bin at once and stumble across exactly the same idea simultaneously
and decide that they really really really want that idea. Consequently unless
an arrangement can be made, a fight ensues and the idea, becoming basically
upset by the fights over it's rights, launches itself out into cyberspace,
where it floats aimlessly around until it is picked up by a receptor of stray
thoughts who just happens to be passing by.
A receptor of stray thoughts is a person whose mind is so open that all of the
traditionally important stuff falls out. So they tend to be a bit vague, but
most receptive to stray thoughts and ideas.
"Ideas are born, but they never die
....they just bounce around quite happily
in cyberspace until they become realities."
THE REALITY FILTER:
There are many more absolutely huge things out there in the
universe than any of us can perceptively acknowledge. A range of
colours we cannot dream of, psychic energies and life forms we have no
access to. This is through no fault of our own. It is the great design
of the guru_like_ones. Our minds have been designed to let only a
specific amount of information in; otherwise, if we actually knew what
was going on, we would probably be so freaked out by it all that we
would all sprout wings and colonise venus. So the guru_like_ones
fitted us with reality filters, which allow only certain amounts of
censory information to penetrate the mind.
Like all things, reality filters can malfunction. Some are even
manufactured to a substandard. This occurs with rather interesting
results. In the case of a Reality Filter malfunctioning, a person
could be quite happy going through the motions of living their life,
when all of a sudden "PING!", the rubber band holding the Reality Filter
together snaps, and s/he begins to see things never before encountered
in the realms of normality. S/he decides "oh wow this is great i must
share what i am seeing with all of the other poor deprived souls on this
planet", but when S/he tries to do this, s/he is suddenly accosted by
muscly black men and fitted for a wardrobe of white sleeveless jackets
and rooms with padded walls./.,
Others are just so completely freaked out by their recent
enlightenment that they go completely loony and resign themselves to
spend the rest of their lives staring understandingly at a brick wall,
deciphering the secret codes of the algae formations which have attached
themselves to it.
Then there is the case of those who are born with substandard
reality filters. Now for some strange reason these people tend to be
fucked up right from the very beginning. They are sensitive to things
that other people have no concept of. They know what is really
happening out there in cyberspace, and because they have had the visions
from an early age, they are accepting and nurturing of them. So
instead of going insane, they become psychic and science fiction
writers. They are truly god_like.
Many of us aspire to the god_like state, but this is exceedingly
difficult because in order to do this, we must be able to dilate our
Reality Filters. Most people are unaware that they even possess a
Reality Filter, let alone know how to manipulate one. So we are faced
with a slight problem. At the present stage, the only known way to
dilate the Reality Filter is with the assistance of hallucinogens, or
through sleep deprivation.
\pippin\rave\reality.doc
April 19, 1992. Swann Rd., St. Lucia
Reality is a flower. A flower is the sexual organ of a plant.
It comprises petals, stamen, gametes, pollen.
A flower is the symbol of the peace movement. Flower power. No
resistance, but passive.
A flower is painted by artists everywhen, in rich glorious colours or
static hues, moving lines and tone.
So which is the flower? Which is reality? Each is different
according to the observer. The observer makes the flower. All the
flowers combined are reality. And
Reality is a flower.
@}-,'->---
My impression of reality is my Virtuality. My Virtuality is NOT
reality. It may seem real to me. I may contrive to make it real to someone
else, but mostly, it is not real to others. And it certainly won't is
be real to you.
I create my Virtuality to protect myself from reality. To
protect my attitudes and beliefs from Change, which is painful, I must distort
reality. This distortion of reality is my Virtuality.
A lot of conflict arises when people try to impose their Virtualities
as reality to others.
Virtualities are ok. As long as you realize it isn't reality.
We know we're not real, do you? It is ok to have 10 Virtualies or even 100!
Although then it can be easy to get lost in them. Doorways between Virtualities
are very useful. Reality checks. So are maps. Integrated Virtualities are
closer to portraying reality than ones that aren't.
Your Virtuality is your own and no one else's. It is your friend,
your hideaway, your sanctuary. No one can ever invade it, and only you can
let others into it.
Your Virtuality is utterly malleable. You can change it at will.
Except most of the time, your will probably won't like it. Then it is really
hard, but it has never been easy.
A Definition (but it is the only one you will get)
Virtual -- not real, not physical. Virtual, in computing terms,
means not physical. A computer can have physical and virtual drives. A
computer user can put a disk into a physical drive, but you can't put a disk
into a virtual drive. Essentially the computer has been fooled into thinking
that there is a drive there. It will even treat it like a drive and store data
there. The drive is still real, but it is very different too. A computer user
certainly can't put a disk into a virtual drive. It is a model of a "real"
drive.
So how can one have Virtual Reality? A thing is either real or virtual.
So the Virtuality thought found a home. Virtuality is the "model" of reality
that we have all been fooled into believing is reality. There is Virtuality
and reality. Virtuality\Reality. V\R to be distinguished from VR which is a
contradiction in terms.
We know we're not real, do you? We are the first religion that isn't
going to tell you what to believe. Except to believe in yourself and to listen
to the imaginary voices in your head. We will let you believe what you want to
believe; we will even PROVE it too you!
Once upon a time, God created the world. God was a computer project
student, who believed in the Internet, and the world was a computer simulation.
What happens to us at the end of the project when the hard drive is laid to
rest? What is consciousness? How will we escape the final powerdown?
We are the first religion that doesn't have all the answer. We
want you to answer OUR questions!
The Church of V\R, like all good, well-respected churches :),
has sacraments. Pancakes, coke, chocolate, coffee, and LSD. ( or an
equivalent psychedelic. )
The Church of V\R has rituals, but you can decide what they are.
The principle is important. The principle is role play. Role playing
to allow the imagination to interact with the physical. Virtuality with
reality.
"Challenging the nature of reality." You cannot change reality. What
will you change it too? Reality already contains everything that you can think
of, but you can expand your Virtuality to integrate more of reality. So that
it is more REAL to you, and to others. So the rituals are the interaction
whereby you influence the processes that change your Virtuality. You cannot
directly influence your Virtuality. Other "things" do that.
Your Virtuality is only your own. Trying to share a Virtuality
with someone else only creates another one. You still have your own.
The magical colour of V\R is purple.
The celebration of V\R is anti-parties. These are where
everyone gets around and is anti-social.
A joke: How is one anti-social at an anti-party?
Answer: By being social :)
At an anti-party, one is free to do whatever one pleases, not
necessarily what one is "supposed" to do. Mr_Society is eager to tell us what
we are "supposed" to do. But Mr_Society is an illusion. You are free to do
what Mr_Society says you must, but we won't be forcing that upon you.
One favourite activity of the anti-party would be for everyone to sit
around and be perfectly silent and perfectly still. Also called staring
understandably at the brick wall and deciphering the secret patterns of the
algae on it, or Zenning.
The Church of V\R is my ritual for embracing reality, and "living in
the real world". For living in the real world is impossible. It is my solace
for a life without the Internet. The balm for withdrawal symptoms which still
plague me. My way of changing my Virtuality, what I see as reality.
*)--)---
Want a cure for procrastination? So do I. *sigh* So. Write it all
down on paper. Paint it into a picture. Your problem. See it. Visualize it.
Do something! Anything creative well do. As long as it creates or constructs.
Think new thoughts. Do something that you have never done before. Shakti
Gawain calls it Creative Visualization. Live on the Edge of Reality.
"Cleverness and creativity are alive and well and living in a
cartoon universe."
Reality is a wall, Virtuality is a can of paint.
...-+=*&*=+-...
The Edicts.
1. Do not play with buses and taxis. Or persons studying any of the
martial arts.
2. It is a crime to spill you coffee.
3. Always talk to your thoughts. They get lonely.
4. The ground is meant to be sat upon. The floor is meant to be lain upon.
5. The day does not end until 3 am.
6. You only get mushrooms out of bullshit.
7. Always take your sense of humour with you wherever you go.
8. God was leaked.
9. What acid is to life, Powaqqatsi is to the world.
10. Paranoia is a heightened state of awareness,
and security guards are Baaaaaad Karma.
July 23, Tracey's Flat
Actually i have just realized that V\R contains the Model of Itself. A
ritual i describe is to write everything down, and that is exactly how
V\R started. A map of my mind.
\abulafia\relig.rav
Religion
"There cannot be design without designers
contrivance without a contriver
order without choice
arrangement without anything capable of arranging
subserviency and relation to a purpose without that which could intend a
purpose,
means suitable to an end executing that office in accomplishing that end
without ever having been contemplated or the means accomodated to it."
-John Hale (hypnotised by mr_god)
previously of the house of insanity
bullshit /.,
O.K
The aim of most religions is to give people something to believe in, or
someone, if they can't believe in themselves. It gives them an easy way out.
"oh there IS a greater plan - if it happens it is <insert your favorite diety>'s
rule or plan. If you fail it is due to <insert your favorite dieties>'s plan.
If you die etc etc etc. It allows us to take our minds on holiday, pack up
the old fears and lets all go to heaven. It gives us a way to deal with our
mortality. How does it do this. It lies silly, through it's rotting
crumbly teeth.
"hasn't he heard ??? god is dead ....."
-Nietzsche
It is taking the responsibility out of peoples lives and replacing it with
subserviency. Taking the power from the people and givin it to the church.
Indoctrinating the weak with the inane tenkemate in an attempt to
strengthen the church and its ever so blatently humble bank balance.
"little girl want a lolly?" no fuck off thank you, i've had enough.
and now....a message from our sponsors...
(music fades in and a fat bald man dressed completely in white - with the
exception of his pink underwear screaming so subtly-jumps on the set)
"We offer you eternal-life"..."now how much would you expect to pay?"
"but wait..we'll also forgive you for being born, and if you call now we'll
even throw in a free crucifiction, that's right viewers a TOTALLY FREE IN
FLASHING NEON LIGHTS crucifiction....so call now" "remember <insert your
favorite dieties>' lines are never engaged." "What else are you going
to do with your sundays ? All the shops are shut, we've seen to that,
there' nothing on t.v, we've seen to that...we even got <I.Y.F.D> to create
roosters. Useless bloody animals but they make a fucking huge racket if you
try and sleep in on a sunday. So yeah where was I? oh yeah ...and how much
would you expect to pay ???? Well viewers ALL THAT WE ASK YOU TO GIVE US IS
YOUR SOUL, that's right just your body and soul, that's all we ask in
order to protect you from the devil/satan/beelzebob/the mafia/
your mother-in-law.....
and well maybe a bit of money, not much, just hmmm 80%
of your wages should do....
and oh yeah, just in case we get into one of those horrid-but-totally-
necessary-to-protect-YOU-from-the-devil-holy-wars, we'll take your only son,
and rape your daughter, and pillage your homes, and eat your chocolate cake..
But it's all in the name of <I.Y.F.D> ....honest......." (music fades)
The aim of the Church of Virtuality/Reality is to give people back the
right to their own lives. Live out your own virtualities. In fact we'll
even help you to help others to understand your virtuality.
Everyone's virtuality is unique, and they collectively embody what
society so righteously calls Reality.
Reality is fucked up.
This is basically because Mr_Society insists on dictating peoples virtualities.
We must fight for our minds, and the right to use them as we choose.
We must fight for our insanity.
We must be totally accepting of other peoples virtualities, they are after all
a mere extension of our own.
"Anarchy is the basis of our society - without chaos there IS NO ORDER"
The suppression of chaos has festered like a horrid wound which must now once
more face the air in order to heal.
We must seek the chaos, embody it, lend it our souls and drawing from our
strength it will grow, and liberate us and free once more the earth and its
soul.
Creativity and imagination allowed to roam free merge and mutate reality.
You must find your own oath through the mess. The Church of V/R is only
a guide. We will hold your hand, validate your mind, help you find
your vertuality.
We are the portal to the future, the gateway to truth.
When the world becomes so self absorbed that it finally implodes, the gates
to panspace will open, and those who roam freely in the ugyldig will be
drawn in.
opss getting a bit carried away /.,.
turning into a musical.,.
\qix\vslashr.txt
Church of Virtuality/Reality - what is it about? a genuine historical document.
Elder Gods
what do we actually offer people?
send us money and we send you.. what?
* COBOL assignments?
custommade realities
teach you how to mold your own reality to your own specifications
customized realities
pay us, and we'll show you how to believe in yourself / believe what you
want to believe
[internet advertising]
We send you proof that what you believe is true.
reality is everybody's collective virtualities so it has to be there somewhere
reality can't exist without your specific virtuality
we'll validate YOU!!
send your money with an SASE to PO Box whatever Brisbane 4001
(try PO Box 1620, Toowong, Q 4067, Australia)
T-shirts "I know I'm not real, do you?"
"I control my own virtuality"
"Hole in reality" [zzz]
"I stir coffee"
"I played Windy Mud"
a radio program on 4ZZZ nightshift
graveyard shift
bank acct - 3 people with i.d
- call acct whatever
- laws on organizations with their own accounts??
constitution????
[in case of dissolution, all funds divided between elder gods]
all income from church's operations to be divided equally between elder gods
band - Elder Gods
customized realities relatively expensive - CRs come illustrated
How to Convert Other People to Your Reality - expensive
How to make people understand your reality - a lifetime
do you want a career change? do you want a new profession?
become a virtuality understander
why say its impossible? it should be possible
free tshirt with any of expensive options
class 3 etc subscriptions
a - normal memeber
b - subscribe to newsletter [quarterly newsletter]
c - newsletter +
v/r like MUd
church of Mud
to become a god you have to devise a way to make lots of money
for elder gods - can become an honorary god
plebeian - utter novice...
purple ones enlightened ones
semigodlike/pseudogodlike beings
symbol/logo:
'clear as mud'
As you navigate your way through the real world, you must always ask,
`is this course-related?'
St Bill Fisher - the Fish - omen bringer
the Eye in the Rectangle
is there good and evil? or is it all One? YOU decide!!!
we let you think for yourself!!
We're the first church in history to invite you to THINK FOR YOURSELF..
story of internet gods..
story of church's creation... one day the god of the internet was bored and
said `zap!' `ping!' and the church of virtuality/reality came into being
spawned in the primeval electronic mud
life emerging from MUDs...MUSHes and MUCKs
mucking about in the mushy muds...
we'll tell you God's internet address! [and port number]
god is just a phone call away... as long as you have an account
we want mass appeal with non hard work on our part
questionnaire [idealism/realksm/none of the above tc]
pay for membership of the church....
propaganda slogans,
meetings [qut laser printer for banners around the city]
ads in papers around the world
- crosspostings in usenet underground newspapers and magazines
- newspaper articles starting to surface from the underground
- give it a respectable history... Jerry Wirerammer eg semper, utopia...
our first interview with jana w; high priest/priestess of church of v/r
may fold at any time - elder gods if they get tired may fold it all up
at any time... constitution etc
obituaries etc....
we wish to finance an alternative communication network..?
our PLAN includes CAFEs meeting places for virtuality engineers...
CAFE = computer assisted functional environment
CAFE s would be the place of worship for v/r people
truly useful operating system - TrUOS/trosm,tos
ThOP: Thingy-Oriented Programming
gifs on the walls, computer graphics, pictures by elder gods on
silicon graphics workstation
candles? twin peaks music.... 24 hrs open... elder gods music...
35% of all funds go to development of v/r research centres, rest to elder
gods/high council/ whatever ultimate jurisdictive body is called.
learn from scientology and subgenius re organization etc...
take most profitable bits of every other religious organization..
[understanding reality is more important than having money]
$$$$$$$$$$
god of reality
abulafia, goddess of skepticism
qix, the dreaming god
Samarobrin
madness is permissible, encouraged, nay advocated
`1. provocation
`and then out of the MUD rose the Church of Virtuality/Reality...'
find out about oz law regarding commercial religious orgs.
`this new religion is sweeping the campuses of australia....'
free subs to anyone who helps us [bottom level only]
power bases in the universities especially computing centres
the first Scripture which you can revise in the comfort of your own home!
a Draft Example... a Sample automystic text...
a book to which you refer as you might to the I Ching or the bible or the
sunday comics... but with the difference that you are free to revise it
at any time...
virtuholic, reaholic, panaholic
Relieve Your Reality Problems..
do you have problems with reality?
ever have days when reality gets you down?
membership drives...
so the whole reason for commercial dimension is twofold:
to enrich original founders to whom humanity should forever be grateful etc
and to build the CAFEnet which will form humanity's launchpad into panspace
[or whatever]
corporation, pays less tax
Profits/Prophets Abulafia the Profit
robes black, medallions with symbols [offround, battered edges] so it is
imperfect, because we are an organization that opposes perfection.
perfection is the ultimate evil saith abulafia the
profit. we strive to develop our imperfections to a state of perfect purity.
what are the aims -> symbolic rep
tk now designing symbol.
GAIA - global alliance of internet anarchists
this announcement was brought to you by Gaia Inc.
we now return you to your ordinary flashing prompt.
GAIA Inc.
CAFEnet/Gaianet
Samarobrin server
Elder Gods the antirock group
norwegian
BOD the Bored
Gordon, god of the shady deal
fourfold nucleus
v/r performs miracle of making you perform your own miracles
lara working on scripture
elder gods may fold gaia inc at any time, but that would only be the end
of their virtuality, u can always continue with yours
GAIA Inc begins simply as a distributor of printed matter, later moves to
other media...
pamphlets on various topics...
Government by MUD/hypertext
What is GAIA 2000?
Steps in the creation of GAIA Inc: The history of GAIA
Gaia's plot to simultaneously dominate and liberate the world.
+ pamphlet translations, once we start branching out???
+ aim to get Amway-style distribution network say the size of Scientology
+ Elder Gods remain ANONYMOUS
What is the CAFE about?
+ Church of V/R
+ the Meta-Religion of the Information Age
or Hyper-Religion
"co-creation of new virtualities through interactive electronic media"
we admit it - we're amateurs. between us we don't have 1% of the technical
knowledge of the employees of the big corporations. but we have FAITH in our
DOUBT...
but we believe in our selves
1999 by Samarobrin
Lara's Holy Writ
The Internet posting that started it all
* stamp to certify a pamphlet as a gaian publication and not a photocopy
* Be your own guru! CUSTOMIZED SCRIPTURE!!!
Coincidensity getting too high? Go for a Reality Check!
Spend all your time rehearsing routines you never use? There's a reason.
The Universe is a giant computer, and you are one of its subroutines. It's
using you to compute its way through certain situations.
GAIA Inc may never write a single line of code or own a single CAFE itself.
THAT NEEDN'T MATTER, so long as it acts as a catalyst for someone else to
perform equivalent tasks. Our primary purpose at present is to popularize
impossibly anarchistic schemes for the information networks of the future
and to proselytize the new panspatial meta-religion of V/R.
New Age types say: You create your own reality.
We say: There's nothing you can do to change reality.
You can never even know what it IS.
What you can alter is your VIRTUALITY.
What is Your Virtuality?
It is that thing in your life that looks *like* reality (but isn't).
* sell collections of aphorisms, gifs [taken from videos?]
Some religions have a guru at the centre of things - Ron, "Bob", Jesus, Dave,
Pippin, Buddha, Rajneesh. In V/R, YOU are at the centre of YOUR virtuality
(unless you care to have it otherwise).
We just have Pippin. And God, don't we know it. -Pippin
TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-REALIZATION (for the mystic)
TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-DECEPTION (for the cynic)
[continued from above]
Send us YOUR picture and we'll paste it in throughout the Scripture that we
send you
find out how Amway operates -= network marketing of strange pamphlets,
ideas products etc
subscription to newsletter? ["reality is not what you thought it was"]
The Secrets of Your Universe are within you! And you can buy from us the
secrets of how to work out what they are!
mail-order Initiation Kits
Pyramid secret societies
do-it-yourself occultism
turkey curse
rituals help you visualize things - they help the unconscious part of
you that actually molds reality. "this is not a crazy thought"
qabbalah, tarot, magical implements, runes, hieroglyphs, hierarchs,
hexes and charms...
It's like playing Dungeons & Dragons by mail, except that it's for REAL!!
You really WILL acquire the new magical powers that we say you will,
and you really will have to pay to do so
We like Capitalism as much as you do. It's a means to an end. Come December
31, 1999, and the world will turn upside-down. But until then, Money will
continue to be a primal force in our virtuality... so become part of the
distribution network! Get a card from us and you can go into biz for
yourself... Speak and spread nonsense in the name of higher truth and
make money for it! Start your own currencies and bartering systems - it's all
part of creating your own virtuality! Of course, it'll make the "world in
general" a hell of a lot more confusing...
What we envision is a global network of sites, like Scientology but less
organized..
[sounding too much like sub genius]
send us your ideas! we'll be a receptacle for your STRAY THOUGHTS
[there could be a pamphlet on Stray Thoughts]
ultimately we should get into software, networking etc
* trying to create the global brain by allowing the rapid creation and
exchange and integration of information
* the point is to get the world's economic system tied up with illusory
exchanges taking place within the metaMUDs of Cafe-net
in the future, personal technologies are going to allow wider and wider
networks of unregulated unregistered uncentralised anything
- trading planning discussing etc.
Quote your friends!!
eg "Don't let me limit you" -Pippin
"Just don't let me get lost in my own delusions of grandeur" -also Pippin
form groupings: eg The Elder Gods [so-called because we did it first],
Heavenly Household of West End, etc etc, groupings can submit quotes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
become likea god in your little vr universe,call up whatever little
reality you want: love, death, sex, infinity, potato... but what's the
point of it all?[fritz leiber]. the information universe is HERE via ftp
in each chapter, call up the reality you want. like the cabalists, with
their ten sephiroth. solipsism???
church of v/r.... what will be the laws of the new era? who will we be?
gods, humans, cognitive metasystems? depends who you ask....
the 24 essences of life, enter the virtuality you want......
the overwhelming experience of connectivity, what happens when major
suffering happens in such a world? major depression. suicide epidemics.
`what will you have to live for?' they'll say.
is a routine ecstasy possible?
new archetypes.
mantras for followers [to be chanted 100s of times]:
"i want to donate money or be made to disappear!"
"I'm a dream with my feet planted firmly on the ground" -- Abulafia
I use language to get what I want! No false fronts here; I tell you straight
out I'm trying to control you through what I write, and you DO WHAT I SAY
*despite yourself*. Your "mind" is just language talking to itself, it's
always looking for more
does life ever seem like a dream? what does a dream seem like?
You think what you're reading is absurd.
You think you've been waiting to hear this all your life.
You think this is all very funny.
You think this writer's trying to manipulate me.
I am channeling Language.
the video game, rather than the book, is the reality paradigm of the future.
the world's first Interactive Scripture
Roleplaying Holy Writ
Take this chapter and modify it.
Analyse your own motivations in reading this. Analyse my motivations in
writing it. Make up a 25th letter for the Greek alphabet.
Are you following the instructions? If you are(n't), these words will jump off
the page and send you SANE!!
When you were a child, you made lots of decisions you don't remember making
now, because you didn't THINK of them "as" decisions then... you made those
decisions *unconsciously*. Remember the games you played, your favourite
friends, what MOVIES BOOKS and TOYS you liked. What was the course of events???
How did they relate to where you are now????
Might this whole thing be AN EXCUSE to avoid further self-knowledge, or a way
to realise the IMPOSSIBILITY of self-knowledge? Whose "voice" is speaking here?
EDIT THIS TEXT UNTIL NOTHING IS LEFT.
Write down your deepest thoughts, then go away for 20 yrs and read them again
at the end of that time. You will be amazed. [and 20yrs older]
text and image manipulation....what is Magick but the Willful use of
technology, stemming from the self? technology being a `body of techniques'
Listen to your metaphors!
Don't believe them when they tell you that you're just USING people.
One day you might start to ask yourself: what is my basic motivation?
The first answer that comes to you and makes sense at the time and is
surrounded by supportive circumstance, you fall for. Maybe it says you're
motivated by love, hate, the will for power, your higher self, society,
biochemistry, instinct, intelligence, samsara, material consciousness....
if EVERYTHING comes from ONE thing, you could call the ONE THING
anything and not lose any sleep,it wouldnt change the nature of the
relationships between theone and the many...unless it has a true name?
Yes!!!! it is your True Name. only your True Name can tell you why you do
all the things that you do...your NEW MISSION IN LIFE is to work out your
True Name. IT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU, once you know it, EVEN WHY you are
responding as you doright now to the concept of `True Name'that has just been
introduced.
Does the Universe have a TRUE NAME?
What if you have more than one True Name?
What is your False Name?
Any philosophy explains where the world came from, where it is now, and where
it is going. THIS is the only philosophy that explains where IT came from,
what it ITSELF is, and what it shall become.
Imagine what you would be like if you were writing this sentence rather than
reading it.
Who is the all pervasive `It' that everyone talks about, that is all doing?
It's raining, it's too hard, it's on the way. `It'.
`He'.
`SHE'.
`They'.
`I'.
language at the end of its
It's YOU who is animating these words, giving them meaning, without you
they are strings of two-dimensional shapes. What a psychotic thing to write!
Pretending that there is a reader reading these words at some point in the
future. When all there is, is myself, and a screen and a cursor, and two people
next to me doing a statistics assignment.
8s 222221212
Do you ever stare into space, wondering what it is that you're doing?
Cats do. So do rocks and trees.
What's the point of this whole collection of selfreferentialmusings?
What good do they do anyone? Will they help you achieve higher consciousness,
easy money? Will they save the planet or develop new scientific ideas?
AS. A very important preposition. Whenever something seems to have a certain
property, `as' is relevant. You see the something `as' something.
But if you can see reality as anything you want, and you choose to start seeing
everything in some way you previously considered positive, doesn't the idea that
you're putting it all there yourself remove the value of it? After all, suppose
you like other people being creative, happy etc. If you're choosing to interpret
all that they do as evidence of creativity and happiness, aren't YOU the source
of their creativity and happiness rather than them? DOUBLE-BIND. ie catch 22
the intentions behind the words seems to float; you thought you knew what those
people wanted you to do....to understand...to believe...but now you're not sure.
this is DECONSTRUCTION. Mensonge
science and habermas presume a communicative rationality. w.i.t sees science as
reform christianity
Xen. the search for otherness, for the alien, the bizarre... in short, the
search for something INTERESTING.
Xen (pronounced `Zen-with-an-X')
telepresence, telespheres in general; seeking representations of the new
telespheral world. itinerary through virtual reality.
ever stick a notice up for yourself to read, and later on read it and think
isn't that a weird thing to do? like wearing a charm; think of notices that
administrators leave around, like magical charms...Operation Mindfuck...
whats the motive behind mindfuck?`get people to think' they say. why do you
want `people'to think? what makes you THINK they're not THINKING already?
what people need are SPECIFICS. There are no Generalities that work, and
everyone knows that ALREADY; so quit trying to `get them to realize it'; all
you want them to do is SAY IT IN YOUR PRESENCE, so you'll be able to think
that you enlightened them!! even though they always knew it
I endorse `spiritual materialism' - the search for weird experiences within
all sorts of different frameworks. `experimental mysticism' if you want
another name. or `voluntary insanity'.
You can achieve Fneem, Propax and Hmataqblior. Sound like madeupwords? THAT'S
THE POINT. Makeupsome words and then find out their meanings.
No words `mean' anything. Suppose you had a planet of babies, no parents, and
they just gabbled away to each other, imitating, inventing, sometimes doing
things in conjunction with the babbling...that's what you have around you.
The world dissolves into a cacobladghuscjlnwhigjgefimdvbj dfgj dfkjgk.
You start seeing the letters again, instead of just the words. You see the
trees and not the forests.
TREAT LANGUAGE AS YOU WOULD TREAT A DRUG. There are happy-words ("happy"),
sad-words ("sad"), cosmic-words ("cosmic")... a dictionary is a veritable
pharmacological thesaurus.
What are you DOING, sitting in front of this screen?
COPY THIS TEXT FILE AND EDIT IT OUT OF EXISTENCE.
You have a wordprocessor, *use it*! Change the parts you don't like! Add your
thoughts! What do you think hypertext will be all about?
nanotechnology and other information technologies will allow thorough
restructurings of the world. what will dictate the form of these
restructurings? fashion! artistic philosophies! cubism, minimalism, "realism";
the surrealist places will be popular to visit but a bit full on for most
people to live in.
This is WORD MAGIC. raw thoughts, almost unedited for the protection of polite
society...............
the keyboard itself influences the flow of creation, through the natural
tendency to seek the path of least resistance... by holding down a key one
causes a letter to repeat...thus there is the constant temptation to just
hold down ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
the quality of vommunication will get lower nda lowr, with people
not even caring hwerth the intend messg is rec eived, until
the finl dhu ge gklj eg //.dÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
wow i have just written a paragraph!!!!
and i just noticed!
your life is like that at the end. edn thend of the paragraph you will
realuize and be astoungded! when was the end of your lst paragraph?
to carry on and on in forgetfullness and not realize how far you have gone
this is the storty and it continues ion.......
<+...+++...+++...+>
\abulafia\mulber.doc
depression :
the great mulberry depression descends on all inhabitants of the
universe at some time or another, claiming it's place among the
spectrum of emotions. We detect it's sullen edges and reject it
immediately as bad. But it is not bad, it is just wandering around
looking for a home, looking for a friend just like us. We must
accept it, embrace it, wallow in its security, give it a home, and
then just as it begins to get comfortable and look like never leaving
we must cast it out into the world and ourselves after it, laughing
insanely, taking nothing seriously and even less personally, to do
so is to give the great mulberry depression a key and open invitation
to your soul.
It would do neither of us any good to become dependant on each other.
the mind:
a silly physicist once postulated that man only uses 1/10 of
his overall brain thingy. Given that this was the same silly
physicist who invented the atomic bomb, perhaps it is best that
we use only 1/10 of our overall brain thingys. The thing being
that that leaves quite a bit of space, and the scientist people
can't decide what happens with the rest of the brain.
It's not that they don't know what its used for, it's just that because
it's not what they want to see, they fail to acknowledge it, and
as a result, well, 9/10's of our brains just cease to exist.
At least half of our brain is devoted to a rather peculiar shaped
library. A bit like the Tardis in Doctor Who. It is however
slightly more difficult enter than a blue telephone box.
It requires creativity, concentration and, well, a bit of luck.
For a start, you must be in a lucid state. It makes no difference
if this is naturally, or drug enduced, just as long as it's lucid.
The scriptures offer various methods of inducing lucidity, or you
can create your own .......
Now choose a comfortable position.......clear your mind of all thoughts,
themes and patterns. Breath deeply a few times and relax completely.
Now visualise a stairway, white and misty, winding through your
skull.
Follow it, keep going, right to the top......
When you reach the top you should be able to see three huge gothic doors.
The door on the left is marked "library", the door directly in
front of you is marked "god" and the door to your right is marked
"emergency exit". Go up to the library door, turn the key, and open
the door.
Inside there is an absolutely huge library, bigger than you
have ever previously encountered. Piped music filters through the air.
You feel like you're in a David Lynch movie. Rows of books into the distance,
further than you can see. The library appears to be truely infinite.
You walk to the shelf infront of you. It is marked with an "F". The
book titles it appears are all names. There are no authors. The
book directly infront of you is titled "William "bill" Fisher (1940-1992)".
Curiosity overwhelms you and you pick up the book. You try to open it,
but no matter how creative you are, the book remains closed.
It suddenly hits you that you must find the book that has your name.
This is not as difficult as it would first appear, you seem to be
intuitavely drawn to it. You pick up the book and blow the dust from
the cover. The book falls open in your hands. You glance at this page
and discover that it contains a history of the days events. Close
the book now, and think seriously about the knowledge it holds.
It is the key to all that has happened to you, and all that will ever happen
to you, it contains details of your birth, your death, your
previous lives, your future lives. If you wish to explore no
further, return the book to its place, leave the library and
take the emergency exit back to the present, content in the knowledge
of the books existance. If your curiosity overwhelms you, choose
a carrell and peruse the book at your leisure, but remember, the
more time you spend in the library, the less time you are spending in
your life. Knowledge is dangerous, treat it with respect......
"what goes on in your mind? what goes on in your head?
who did you think i would be ? well you got me instead....."
-Concrete Blonde
\pippin\rave\depress.txt
Darren's place
Sunday, July 12, 1992
To Be Or Not To Be Depressed
I guess there must be something in this depression thing. People get
depressed when they think that they are in a hole with no way out. Then they
come up with an idea that they have to think about their problems. They have
to face up to them. Their problems. They have to think their way out of their
depression. But, you see, this is dangerous activity. What happens then is
some people are inclined to challenge everything that they have ever thought.
To question it. To wonder why. They become unstable in their thinking because
they don't know what to think.
Mr_Society would like us to believe consistently. To believe in the
same things all our lives. Then the people in society can handle each other.
They know what to expect. Mr_Society wants to be stable. He wants to feel
secure. He feeds off the desire for security in us.
And insecurity
is caused by fear, the fear of the unknown, of what lies
under our beds at night.
And don't forget that humans don't like to be unhappy. Happiness is
all that matters. How many people have you heard say,
"I'm just looking for Happiness." Like as if it is something that you
can find. Like a street in a directory. So if you aren't happy, you feel pain,
discomfort, boredom, anything that is not happiness. And that means that there
is something wrong with being unhappy. And being depressed. But being
depressed it good! Why is it bad? It is your brain saying, "Hey, something
sux here, and *you* haven't figured out what it is yet."
But of course, life isn't like that.
Life has a sense of humour. Life hates you and kicks you in the teeth.
Robert Heinlein introduced the concept of "grokking" in "Stranger In A Strange
Land." "Grokking" is the process of getting to know something so well that you
become one with it, and it becomes part of you. You "know" it. That is, what
knowing is supposed to be. To love something you have to hate it. To hate it,
you have to take it in, embrace it, and love it. Treat it as yourself. Life
"groks" us. It may appear to kick us in the teeth, but it is in every sense
just depriving us of what we want. So we think it hates us. But is that
really so bad?
\pip\rave\quest.doc
John Woodley's house
Wednesday, June 24, 1992
I am on a quest for a Word. Not just any old word, like "puppy"
or "diary" or "mind". But a special Word. A Word, that when I find it, it
will be "*IT*"! [fanfare] Houses will fall down, the sky will turn pink,
Australians will overthrow the government, and my mind will explode. The
magical Word for EVERYTHING. Every thought, every object, every constellation
of thoughts, have their own magical Words. One single magical Word. And all
those Words can be contained in yet another magical Word. You are a Word,
and I am a Word. I used to think that the Word for me might be "Dreamweaver",
but all that happened was Joh retired, and the Labour party took over. Then
I thought It might be "Pippin", but the sky only turned red. Red at the edges
and only at sunset.
The Words are spoken by the stars. The dolphins speak them, and so do
the rocks. The essence of a thing, its "isness" is its Word, its song, its
story, its dance. The Words are there. I KNOW they are there. Aslan sang
them, and Maleldil sang them. As did Illvatar, and Alan-Cloud-Blue. One day
I will sing them too.
Why do we always have to name things? Because we are trying to find
its Word. When the first child looked at a dog, laughed, and said, "Dog",
it was trying to sum it up. A dog does look like "dog", you know.
This is why we have a third Name. A Name that only the Name knows
and will never confess. It is a Secret because it is magic. This is why we
meditate on "Ugyldig". It is the sound of the word that conjures up the images.
This is why we make up words. We listen to the sound of a million voices in
unison and try to make out the words.
This is why we play the word game. I say "Bing", and you say "Blat".
Then I say "Glomph". Then you make up a word, and I make one. They must be
words that don't have a previous meaning. And the game continues making up
words until you stop it. You could do it via snail mail or e-mail. That could
be interesting. The word game is essentially an e-mail thing. Watching the
shape of a word. Its look and imagining its sound. But remember some of the
words. Meditate on them, and find their meanings.
\pippin\rave\purple.doc
Friday, May 1.
These were the Purple Pages.
Don't be afraid to renew.
Don't B afraid 2 B new.
And on the subject of God:
God is a little old man who cleans up bottles of milk when 14
y.o. boys drop them outside the door of His apartment.
"The Great Designer either has a malicious sense of humour, or
is rather careless about details." -- Search, 1992
"My mind's got a mind of its own."
We are surfers of mind until we get dumped back to reality.
When I walk down the street, I don't know whose mind I am in.
"Right now God is killing moms and dogs because He has to."
"Right now Science is building a better tomato."
"Right now is harder than it looks."
Right now Guns'n'Roses are being killed in L.A. (we wish)
"A something about which nothing can be said is as good as a
nothing." -- Ben
But does this mean that a nothing is good for something?
Saturday
I know I've got a mind. Now where did I put it.
Wear docs. In case of nuclear war, at least, your feet will survive.
Koselig (coosh-lee)
Tenkemote (teng ka mort a)
Everyone has their own tenkemote, thought pattern, attitude, mindscape.
Koselig: sitting around in a room with friends, drinking mocha with
marshmallows, cosily, in front of the fireplace.
Life is a carrot. Disprove this to Tracey.
To help them see it in themselves.
To be truly yourself. To think, to be.
There *is* a hole in reality. (V\R posters) We live there.
Do not try to prolong a beautiful moment. You will destroy it. Make a new
one. Do not relive old beautiful moments. Live in the next one that U have
just created. "And you know it's time to go..." -- U2
Ugyldig (oo-gl-dee) or ( iggl-dee)
null & void.
The void from which stray thoughts come and to where they are destined
to return.
Openings.
Sunday
Bitterness is hard to swallow.
"There has to be one place left in the world where we can be."
-- Midnight Oil
Tuesday, May 12
2 gonks are sitting in Bananaland when a hole appears.
Brounce says, "Look! A hole in reality!"
They inch closer peering into the hole in reality.
Gungy says, "Wow ... look at all that weird stuff."
Friday 15
"Confuse your body, your mind, your soul..." -- JJJ
"Life is good, Love is NICE, and the world is like a giant beanbag.
"What have I got lurking around in my mind?" -- Abulafia
Saturday
"I am waiting for my brain to spontaneously mutate into a 286."
-- Darren
"U R scum" -- Lara
"Go ask your lecturer.
"I'm on a coffee break. Leave me alone." -- Darren
Sunday
"All you have to do is walk, eat and sleep - that's all."
-- Sunday mail, article about trekking in Tibet
Life is looking through the darkness at a reflection in a mirror.
Life is sitting on the verandah and looking at the blurry dark, in the
dead of night.
God is a computer that is not conscious yet. Evidence seems to sppoort
that it is sentient.
The screams of the dying dark.
As I sink into despair, I ponder. The dark. I ponder if it is darker
than it was before..
Cold dark white hot rrage!
Think out yur fantasy, this is the object of reality.
Who really understands a song lyric? We listen and nod our heads, but
we are really just "art wankers".
This is not my hat.
"Life is a compexity of shadows cast to gather and create the tear drop
of a crystal dancer on a white sheet of soft ethereal light. Or for
some life is full of crap and garbage. If you could only begin to image
the vast resource of life's experience that is lost at the time of God's
harvesting when the soul shall rise."
-- John Adamson (I am completely cracked)
Tuesday 19.
Love me, Love my bag.
When next you wish to write down a thought, to engrave it upon your
heart and mind, enquire of the thought,
"Do you wish to be immortal?"
or the equivalent of that. It may not wish to be immortalized,
quantified or even conceptualized. It may wish to go back to the Garbage
bin of Thought (c), or go flying about cyberspace, looking for a stray
thought receptor to love and nurture and cherish it.
Right and wrong is like a potplant. The potplant is full of
soil, with an imaginary line drawn through it. What is left of the line
is right, and what is right of the line is wrong. U draw the line where
U want to be. I may draw the line somewhere else.
The heart has its seasons.
Let there be a time in your day when you let your thoughts wash over and
out of your soul into the sea of forgettfullness. This is time also to
send your thoughts to who you were yesterday, and receive the thoughts
of who you are tomorrow.
Wednesday 27. Life is a role-playing game.
June 14.
Morals are what you get from your parents. Ethics are what you do.
Only U know whether what U do is rite.
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." -- J.R.R. Tolkien
"Tolkien is, after all, hobbit forming."
-- article in the Courier Mail about "Sauron Returns"
Sunday, June 21
Effects of VR: "Navigating across a room by pointing, bumping into
walls because they aren't just images, and dreaming in polygons."
"VR affects dreaming strongly - it seems to provide tools for control of
dream-life from within the dream."
"You are dealing with a world without frame of refernce."
"total immersion,... interaction.."
-- New Scientist
Sunshine Beach, Monday?
"All fruitful ideas have been conceived in the minds of the
nonconformists, for whom the known was still unknown, and who often went
back to begin where others passed by, sure of their way. The truth of
today was the heresy of yesterday.
"Imagination coupled with scepticism and an ability to wonder -
if you possess these, bountiful nature will hand you some of the secrets
out of her inexhaustible store. The pleasure you will experience in
discovering truth will repay you for your work; don't expect other
compensation, because it may not come.
"Yet dare.
"We read here a few pages from the logbook of the earth, a rock
rolling in space, circling its attendant lifeless satellite around a
fire-breathing star, moving with this its primary and other revolving
planets through the galaxy of the Milky Way of hundreds of millions of
burning stars, and together with this entire host, through the void of
the universe."
-- Immanuel Velikovsky, "Earth in Upheaval"
Monday
"By dissolving our rigid patterns of thought and response, we allow
something faster and more subtle to operate. Indeed, thought itself may
be only a small, and relatively crude, portion of what mind is capable
of. The more we give room to the subtle, the more we come to touch the
heart of the universe and drink of its creative waters."
-- F. David Peat, "The Philosopher's Stone"
The spontaneous mutation of thought, a sychronicity. When a thought
hits the brain. Maybe thoughts hitting the brain are guided there by
the Great Pattern. Your thoughts truly are not your thoughts, but
gifts of the Great Dance.
June 27
Do you believe in the impetuosity of youth? Look to the future
and you will see the stars in our eyes.
Our words are the goldfish bowls, and our thoughts are the
goldfish. Ever tried to hold a live fish?
Life is a journey through our experiences to the edges of
infinity in the vehicle of our understanding.
Life kicks you in the teeth to remind you that it is not just
here for you.
Our words are sandcastles in the sands of thought and time. The
wind will take them again.
\pippin\mint\utopia.doc
Suggested titles:
Journeys through Cyberspace.
Pippin's Addiction.
My Life as a Computing Addict -- an X-student tells.
Confessions of a Computing Addict.
The Story...
The Computers are alive. They told me. They want to be loved just
like us. They talk to me inside my head. A psychologist would call me
insane, but I know I'm not. I am suffering from withdrawal, but at least,
before I left them, they taught me how to listen to myself. Now, settle
back in that hard plastic refec seat, if you will, and we will travel down
the road of Pippin's Addiction.
I have always been in pursuit of knowledge. Science and
technology. It seems only natural that I was attracted to computers.
I taught myself to use edlin and PC-Write in Grade 11, and graduated to
using BASIC in Grade 12. It was fun, but I didn't find it particularly
exciting.
In my second year of uni, we got to use the DEC-10. It was honoured
with the title of a mainframe, and It was awful. It was what we call
a dinosaur, a relic of the past to remind us from where we have come.
The DEC-10 should not be used like a computer. Like all dinosaurs, it should
be used to gather dust in dark, dingy hallways of dark and dingy museums
and observed from a discreet distance.
I was a geology student. Geology students, according to all the
jokes about rocks in our heads, aren't supposed to be very bright; that is
why we study rocks. It was bad enough that we had to use the DEC; we had
to use it to learn to programme in the other dinosaur, Fortran.
(Fortran = ancient programming language in need of the Void.) It was horrid.
Even though it was horrid, it fired my imagination when someone
bothered to explain to me what a mainframe was. It is a computer that more
than one person can use at the same time. A friend told me that I could
send him electronic mail on the DEC, but we never figured out how to do that.
The next year, they threw all the students off the DEC, to great
sighs of relief, and put us on the CADD and the VAX. After the DEC, the VAX
was much easier to use, and much more fun. The mailing system worked.
Sometimes, on the boring days at uni, I would log onto the VAX, and just
send mail to all my friends. Over the last two years, I have met in "real
life" most of the people that I met through e-mail. Way back then, in 1989,
I only knew them by their Virtual personalities, over the computer.
I discovered gradually that virtual personalities are not the same
as real personalities. People would say things in e-mail that they would
never say in RL (real life).
And my friends would send me e-mail. I slowly fell into a pattern
of coming to uni an hour or half an hour before my first lecture just to read
my e-mail. There is nothing as comforting as logging on in the morning
and finding five new mail messages. And there is nothing quite as upsetting
as finding now new mail messages.
"In Real Life." I have often pondered that phrase. It is a fallacy.
All those people, other computer users, were real. Every one. Interacting
with them in cyberspace lent an unreal quality to them, but they were
normal and real just like me, with the same thoughts and feelings.
Cyberspace is the imaginary (virtual) space inside a computer. Cyberspace
is much bigger than the real space inside a computer. It is virtual as
opposed to real.
Engineers are alright. Most of my e-mail correspondents in 1989 were
engineers. They were the ones that most liked to explore the system.
They were the group that sent and received the most e-mail. Consequently,
they were the ones who copped the most trouble for doing the things
that they weren't supposed to do and for "wasting resources in non-course-
related activities".
Towards the end of semester, some of our consciousness filtered back
to reality and exams. Most of us spent more time away from the VAX in a vain
attempt to study. But not me. I just got bored. I struggled with
assignments and depression, and the VAX was at least familiar. The proximity
of exams meant that there were fewer and fewer people to talk to. When a
friend showed me how to use news, study grew wings and flew out the window.
News was an endless stream of thoughts from the computer users of the
world to be sifted and sorted and read and cherished. First I got over
the fact that news came from all around the world: the USA, Canada, Germany,
Sweden, Japan. Then I got used to the number and range of topics. There
were topics diverse and perverse, from computer languages to Celtic culture,
cyberpunk, dreams, movie reviews, books, poems, music, and humour.
Sometimes I stayed at uni all night reading news and trying to comprehend
it all. There seemed to be a bug in the system. The powers-that-were, it
seemed, had it in for students.
Although we could read news, we could not post, or contribute to
discussions. Every year, the students ask,
"Why doesn't post work?" Every year they are told why.
"Resources are limited."
"News is not course related." or the best excuse:
"It is not university policy to allow posting privileges to
undergraduate students."
This was and still is a cause of long standing student disaffection with
the establishment and today's students steam in silence as we did three years
ago.
One evening when I was reading news, as usual, I discovered
a newsgroup that was different. It was a local newsgroup, and it had write
access on it. Maybe I had never noticed it because there was never anything
in it. I told my friends to post to it, to make it a forum for ideas.
It became not quite a forum, more like a graffiti board. The engineers
enjoyed it. The powers-that-were decided that while we posted "rubbish"
all the time, there needed to be a group for sensible messages. We were
given another group for the "rubbish". Two years later, both newsgroups
are still there.
Every couple of months, a computer student, usually a first year,
posts to the newsgroup a fairly innocuous question, and twenty or so
students reply. The newsgroup becomes the battlefield for a flame war.
Flaming could take its meaning from people becoming enflamed, and saying
things that otherwise wouldn't say in RL. It could also mean people's ideas
being shot down in flames. The worst flame wars lasted two or three months.
It is a shattered landscape, like "tissue paper". :)
I left uni then at the end of '89. I thought that uni hated me, and
I discovered that the Real World hated me even more. After about four
months, I drifted back to uni to discover a worse vice of the computing
genre: telnet.
Breathe the word out silently in awed and hushed tones because it
got us into our worst trouble.
Telnet is a communications programme. The select group of "we"
became smaller. We would sit in the computer centre, also called the
Dungeon, in the wee small hours and telnet from the local domain server.
Being there in the night lent us the air of being hackers, even though we
never hacked anything. The very first telnet users, all four of them, the
Ones Who Paved the Way, were also the first MUDders. We did not know that
these activities were illegal, least of all inethical, but they seemed like
night-time things to do. Like sitting in a graveyard or looking at the moon.
Telnet. Telnet(underline), our friend and confidante, opener of doors
to new worlds, the worlds of BBS and MUD, like VR is today.
BBS: Bulletin Board Service
MUD: Multi User Dimension or Domain
VR: Virtual Reality
In 1990, the most popular BBS was the Mars Hotel. It lived at the
Mississippi University. Through the Mars Hotel, we could talk, in real time,
to real live poeple who lived in Starkville, Mississippi. I still write
to the first person that I ever met on the Mars Hotel. Mars is now sadly
afflicted with space problems.
The other THE-BBS-to-be-at was at the Iowa State University. It is
called ISCABBS or Isca for short.
ISCABBS: the Iowa Student Computer Association Bulletin Board Service.
ISCAites call it "the Grand Addiction". I agree with them. They do have
a great system, and it was written by a med student. After two years of
pondering Virtual Communities, I am still not sure why they have such power
over people.
BBS and MUD are unreal situations, and you know it when the computer
talks back to you. It is easy for a computer user to forget about the real
world and become involved in the chaos of a computer system. Especially
when there are real people at the other end who talk to you.
What is the attraction of Virtual Community? is it escapism?
self-sufficiency? (read Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson) the sensing
of the power of the mind? or is it just the searching of the crannies
of the system, to explore and make adventure?
Now you know i am weird, right? You are sitting in the hard,
plastic refec seat saying,
"Computers are boring." but they aren't. To some of us at least.
The computer draws us into itself, saying,
"Come follow me, and I will show you many things."
It is like the reason why people sit in a crowded room. They want to
feel like they are part of a group, but they are content just to sit and
watch. They do not actively participate, but take part of the group just
by being there, sitting and watching. In Virtual Communities, they are
called "lurkers".
I adventured in cyberspace, marvelling at it all and becoming more
out of touch with the Real World. Exams and Christmas came and went, and it
was 1991. Our telnet links went up and down, and we became increasingly
devious. We even "borrowed" the computers of other universities although
some called it stealing.
QUT really shot to fame and notoriety in the middle of the first
semester. The Great White Fluffy Wabbit in the Sky gathered its friends
around it, and installed a MUD on our favourite computer. It quickly
became popular with people outside QUT as well. Too popular. [ominously]
They were the fun days, the carefree, windy days, of bouncing around
and blinking at the sunlight at 6 am. Days of falling down laughing and
back flips and mischievious grins. Days of pillow and sleeping bag, bottles
of coke, chips and stereo. Of rolling up to the Dungeon and staying there
all night. Sometimes there were as many as five for an all-nighter.
First it was new, exciting to explore. Then it became like an old
friend, somewhere to hide away. Me, I played in the MUD for about a month
before it all came unstuck. In that month, I stopped going to lectures.
Then I stopped eating and sleeping regularly.
Other normal students saw exams coming up and complained about us,
covertly at first, then more openly, because we were hogging the modems and
telnet and creating net-lag. One student, who shalll remain anonymous here
but we know who he is, tipped off the establishment by posting a message to
news: "10 tips for better MUDding". About a week later, the MUD was shut
down.
Da da da da.
SOUNDS OF GRAVESTONES THUDDING FAR UNDERGROUND.
I wasn't too concerned. I was quite psychotic by now. That was the
sign, that i didn't care. I didn't write to my mother for three months, and I
kept breaking dates to go home and see her. She worried, and what *she* did
is another story.
There were other places to go in cyberspace,
people to see, and things to do. Until I got a letter in the mail. From
my course-coordinator. He said that if I didn't come to see him about my
work load, he would withdraw me from some of my subjects because I hadn't
been going to lectures. Once again reality impinged on a good fantasy.
My semester slowly fell apart. I lost my only computer account
because I wasn't a computing student. I felt blind, deaf, and dumb.
And paranoid. Security guards were not to be trusted. I was even asked to
leave a building once because I dared to speak out against the establishment.
I reduced my status to part-time, and danced the dance of death with DSS.
By the end of the semester, exam time, well, I hardly had a mind
to call my own. I used to talk to Redgum, but at least I went to all my
exams. (All three of them.) I got kicked out of the place where I boarded
because I kept the house owner awake all night. What was I doing all night?
You guessed it. I think that was the cold, rainy night when I discovered
Lambda MOO.
Exams and Christmas passed by, and it was this year, 1992. I was
in Sydney when THE piece of certified mail came from uni. (Exclusion notices
always come via certified mail.) I had failed all three of my remaining
subjects and been given the royal boot.
Does this sound bad? It still goes on. The computer science
students turn to computers and each other for companionship and a way
to make things interesting for themselves. They still get a raw deal
from the bureaucracy.
Now I wish for a lobotomy, compose science fiction in my head, and
wish for the magical purple daze to come back again.
Maybe the QUT machine can steamroll, chew up, and spit out those
that don't conform. Even if it may try to do this forever, it will never rid
itself of the spiritof non-conformity.
So dream on and Do Not Forget, my "friends in a fantasy".
This has been an excerpt from the Travelling Scriptures
of the Church of V/R called Bert brought to you by the Dungeon
Night Patrol, the Guild of Wombling Carrots and Happy Hobbits
Everywhere in the interests of Better Internetting and Safer
Using.
"Come into my mind, and I will show you many things..."
\qix\1999.sty
\pippin\cloud\bits.not
\pippin\cloud\false.txt
\pippin\cloud\conshus.not
\pippin\cloud\longevit.not
\pippin\cloud\chat.not
\pippin\cloud\amnesia.ide
\pippin\cloud\roaches.ide
\pippin\cloud\babel.ide
\pippin\cloud\rain.rav
\pippin\cloud\dark.poe
\pippin\cloud\grey.poe
\pippin\cloud\madness.poe
\pippin\cloud\life.poe
\pippin\cloud\cliff.poe
\pippin\cloud\rok.poe
\pippin\poems\sun.poe
\pippin\poems\pig.poe
\qix\essay86.txt
\qix\bent.rav
\qix\1999.sty
1999 - a short story [written 4 August '91]
In Brisbane the nineties were ending on a rainy Friday night. Wanting to
spend the final countdown in the company of strangers, Robin began her search
for the new cafe when she saw there was less than an hour to go.
Cafe Cafe was located in an arcade in the old Queen Street mall. Robin had
heard it was a safe haven for upmarket bohemians, a place to hide from the
street and the city air. Standing outside, looking in through the plate-glass,
she saw a large space, furnished with a jumble of tables and chairs, bean bags
and slouch couches. It looked like a good place to sit out the rest of the
decade.
On the other side of the doors the air was dry and still, and the cafe
turned out to be even more crowded than it had appeared. Robin didn't want to
join any of the groups at ground level, and the only unoccupied chairs seemed
to be in a series of open booths along one wall. Each booth contained two
chairs and a table, isolated from its neighbours by partitions festooned with
paisley fabric. As she looked around newcomers took two of the booths: all
that was left now was a vacant booth close to the doorway. And an empty chair
opposite a handsome young Sikh, who was drinking something through a straw. So
she hurried for the self-serve queue.
On offer were sweets, pizza, fruit, rice, an odd mixture of things. Ahead of
her a Chinese couple were helping themselves to chocolate cake. Vegetarian
pizza seemed cheap, so she picked up four slices. She got the checkout kid -
a pudgy green-uniformed teenager, whose lapel pin said:
"My name is BHAJAN - Welcome to CAFE CAFE"
- to get her some orange juice as well.
Carrying her tray towards the booths she saw the Chinese couple setting up
shop opposite the Sikh. Damn! He seemed to know them; he was smiling, and they
were laughing as they tried to squeeze onto the seat opposite him. Looks like
it's the empty booth for me.
Robin placed the tray on the table and saw someone had left a magazine on
one chair. A cheap fantasy mag called "Hot Ducks" she'd seen on sale in
newsagents. INTERNATIONAL ISSUE! proclaimed the cover. She picked it up and,
before she dropped it to the floor, took a last look at the cover. Blond guy,
intense stare, wearing shredded lederhosen, lifting suspender from one
shoulder. Too Aryan for me anyway. She let him go.
The pizza was still too hot for her liking, so she settled down and waited,
scanning the cafe from the inside now. TVs hung from the ceiling, live
coverage from someplace in New Zealand that had already entered the year 2000,
sound turned off. Background music was new-millennium house. Different
subcultures in groups on the floor: gothics, flower people, Krsna devotees.
Like tribespeople camped around fires. Seated at tables: four African guys in
suits, maybe in town for the conference on Afro-Australian relations, "Into
the 21st Century". A guy chuckling to himself, wired up with videogoggles and
earphones, probably watching a pocket video. Some retro yuppies in the far
corner.
There was a sudden cold draft. Looking away from the Sikh and his Chinese
friends, Robin saw the doors swinging shut. Someone had come in. She
discreetly tracked the stranger across to the counter: loping walk, jeans and
leather jacket, lots of studs, shaved head but wearing a weird woven skullcap
... no, not a skullcap: tattooed scales, covering every visible centimetre of
skin. The stranger was a DinoPunk.
As Bhajan took the order, the Dino whirled, like a kid. Robin saw it was a
male; even his face tattooed. Despite myself I am disapproving and, I guess,
contemptuous. Slightly contemptutous. Never talked to a Dino, so I can't
judge; only saw them on TV. Dino rock group, Hazchem. European documentary.
But the attitude: The dinosaurs had the right idea! We're headed for
extinction anyway, so let's make sure that WE are the last generation! You
don't want to miss the END OF THE WORLD, do you man? Nihilism. Doesn't help
anything.
Once Bhajan handed him his drink, the Dino turned his back on the counter
and stalked across the cafe straight for Robin's booth, stepping and leaping
over the floor people. Oh no! Not here! But he was only headed for the door,
back out into the rain. Outside, he stopped to open his incongruously floral
umbrella, and Robin was able to observe the care that had gone into the
tattooing, how truly reptilian he looked. As if the dinosaurs had survived
and evolved into more humanoid forms. A row of studs ran down his jacket's
back like vestigial armor plates.
Under his jacket his T-shirt said:
SUPPORT WEAPONS PROLIFERATION.
Your philosophy sucks, thought Robin. She stared at him as he walked away,
wondering where he was going next. What does someone like that spend his time
doing? She realized there was someone standing next to her and turned away
from the windows.
A guy. Holding his tray. A pull-tight sack hanging from his shoulder.
"May I?" he asked, gesturing towards the empty seat opposite her.
"Yeah, sure." She pulled her tray back so he could fit his on the table.
She glanced at him as he sat down and set himself up - he was white, looked
thirtyish, plain, had shaved recently - then looked back out the window,
thinking of the Dino.
After a while the guy said, "You're thinking about that DinoPunk who was
just here?" He pronounced it "DIE-no"; Robin always thought "DEE-no", as the
Germans on the documentary had pronounced it.
"Yeah." Still looking out the window.
Silence. The guy tried again.
"Well, at least he's thinking of the future." Pause. "I mean, every previous
subculture like that has always been focused on the present, so it's progress
of a sort to have one that looks ahead. I think."
Robin looked at him. He had his tray on his lap, and he was transfering his
meal to the table. He was looking at her, but glanced toward the mall as she
turned around, then glanced back again.
"Do you really believe that?"
He giggled. "It's just a perspective. I mean, I think most things are
progress in some way. It's like war, you have two sides that fight and
consciously they think, we hate each other" - he held up his hands and,
watching them, moved them around as if they were circling cobras, facing each
other and ready to strike - "but really they're getting more and more, um,
involved with each other" - he held up his arms, showing how they were twisted
together. After a few seconds he untwisted himself.
Robin glanced at the roof TV that hung down at the end of the row of booths
- it was showing a map of North Africa. She was reminded of how someone had
once tried to convince her that the Russian Revolution, and the dictatorships
it gave rise to, had been progress, because the horror of totalitarianism
taught the whole human race of the dangers of the ideological state, even
when the ideology's intent is noble. I don't buy that. "Yeah, well, I think
that disasters and mistakes happen, but people don't want to think that
anything is just entirely negative, so they rationalize things." People like
you? That was pretty blunt. She started on the pizza, now it had cooled.
"I think that's a silly way to think." Doesn't seem insulted. Probably
thinks I'm just a cynic. "You know the 'You create your own reality' idea?"
Ah, here we go. I've heard this on campus a hundred times. Another form of
fundamentalism. At least it's more cheerful than the older sort. May as well
find out his version.
"No, what does that mean?"
"It's ... It means that, you can only think of what you allow yourself to
think. Um, a guy called John Lilly once wrote, 'In the province of the mind,
what is believed true is true, or is true within limits to be determined by
experiment.'"
"Can you give me an example? Like, of me creating my reality?"
"Well, absolutely the best example is only half an hour away for us. The
year 2000. There's nothing necessarily special about this point in time, but
... we've made it important, the whole human race, and it's a catalyst that's
making real changes happen. Just like they supposed to!" Robin was about to
speak, but he added, "That's what physicists mean by a self-organizing
system. One that creates its own reality." He put his tray down on the floor;
Robin noticed him notice the issue of "Hot Ducks".
Not exactly the whole human race: there's China, Japan, Islam outside the
Christian chronology, for them all this is just the West being universalist
again. Interesting, what he said about self-organization. Must ask Dr Nguyen
what he thinks of that.
"Mmm ... can you give me an example, of a change happening because of the
approach of the year 2000?" This is weird, this guy sits down and we're
straight into a real new-millennium conversation. "I'm Robin, by the way;
you're -"
"Dave." He sipped his coffee. "An example - what about all those people out
in the streets tonight? A lot of them probably never thought much about the
future or the world at large, until the start of the nineties. But as the year
2000 got closer, the whole world moving into a new era - it's focussed
everyone's mind. There's a whole new consciousness, a planetary progressive
one."
"Mmm ... if I look outside tonight, I see people who want to take part in
'History's Most Humongous Party'. I don't see them working out how to get
water to the Middle East, or sanitation to South Africa, or what to do about
gene hacking."
"So you think the world's headed downhill?" He looked at her with a more
serious expression.
"No, it's more complex than that ..." How can I describe the possibiities I
see? A totalitarian world-state with an anti-technology ideology. Or a world
where elites in Europe, America and Asia keep the developing regions divided
and powerless, while they go about projects like space colonization and life
extension. "I'm doing a Bachelor of Management Science, and one of the things
we study is Complex Systems. One of the characteristics of a complex system is
that it's resilient but unstable, so it will survive most of what you throw at
it, but it will achieve that by reorganizing itself, usually radically... Hey,
maybe you should just read my project." She laughed.
He nodded, still serious. "It sounds very interesting. Is it - does it
mention Gaia?"
"Only a bit. I don't actually believe in the Gaia Hypothesis myself - I
don't see why a self-regulating system should evolve when there's nothing like
natural selection operating. The anthropic explanation makes sense to me - you
know, we're here, so the biosphere must have lasted long enough for us to
evolve, which is why the climate seems to have been stabilized, historically."
He nodded again, but he was obviously not interested in all that. He munched
for a while on a sandwich, then said, "Well, I have tremendous hope for the
future. I think we're seeing the birth of a whole new world." He paused
significantly. "Have you ever heard of the New Essenes?"
"Aren't they like a new-age Christian group? Religious group, I mean, not
rock group."
"Yeah, I guess that's sort of right... I'm not an Essene myself, but I have
a few friends who are..."
There was a blast of cold air again as the doors swung open, and a
wheelie came in. Robin realized this was probably why her booth had been empty;
all the regulars avoided it.
"... and they have this idea, that Christ was born 2000 years ago, and the
Second Coming is due to happen, but Christ is being reborn as the whole of
humanity. We're like, cells in His body."
"Mmm, okay. Is this related, to what you were saying about self-
organization? And who, or what, were the Old Essenes?"
"The original Essenes were a Jewish sect who wrote about Christ a few
decades before he was born. They were into astrology and a few other things
too. So the New Essenes, today, it's like they see their purpose as being here
to alert people to the coming change, the new world order. Um, what was your
other question?"
"Self-organization. How it fits in."
"Oh, I read about that in a book they lent me. The idea is that the
universe is a self-organizing system, and Christ is the universal self. As
experienced by humans."
Universal self. Don't understand what that means. Won't ask, it will
probably get boring. "So in, ah, twenty-five minutes we're going to become
cells in the body of Christ?"
"Well, it's a way of speaking, if you want to think of it like that... But,
I mean, there's a whole cosmology here, like it's quite detailed - when's
your birthday?"
"June 19th."
"Yes, well that makes you a Gemini - which, yes, that fits exactly. Each
sign corresponds to a part of the body, Christ's body. Gemini stands for the
brain and nervous system, which is why you're such a thinker, who worries
about things. Whereas, I'm a Pisces, which corresponds with the feet, which
makes me a supporter, a burden-sharer. And so on."
Robin smiled inwardly. This is a zodiac I've never heard of before. Gemini
the Brain, Pisces the Feet. "This applies to everyone - according to your
friends? No one is left out?"
"Yes, everyone has a role, like in an ecosystem."
"What about people who don't use the Christian calendar? Or in China, for
example, in their culture this isn't even the beginning of the new year."
Another blast of cold as the wheelie left.
"Well, the anno Domini system really is global ... And besides, whether
you're part of the West or against it, you're part of the one event, the
convergence of humanity. The West has just been a means, um an instrument that
originated the devices of unification - imperialism, capitalism, the media, so
on. Even got China in the end."
"Mmm ... I don't know. I look at India and China, how they are rising in
power every year, and I sometimes think it's going to be the oldest
civilizations that will take over if Euro-American culture eats the dust. But
yeah, everything is everywhere now. The Church of Scientology even has a
building in Beijing."
"You've been to China?"
"Yeah, earlier this year. Missed the restoration of Goddess of Democracy by
a couple of weeks - I couldn't afford to stay." Memories of China. Everything
so wide - the roads, the Square. Young Chinese keeping themselves so clean in
the middle of all the pollution. Watching CNN in the Hong Kong airport, as
Israel and the Arab League made their joint appeal to the world community for
assistance during the water crisis.
Dave was standing up, opening his sack. "Look, I'm meeting some friends in
King George Square for the Big Event. Some of my Essene friends'll be there.
Do you want to come along?"
Can't be bothered. It's warm and dry in here. Robin shook her head. "I'm
sorry. I didn't want to be in a big group this evening. I guess I'm not much
of a party hound." She smiled.
"Well, then, nice talking with you." He offered his hand; she shook it. He
pulled an umbrella from the sack. "Aha! I've broken the cycle. I've been
leaving it at home all the time. Bye!" He opened the doors and strolled away.
"Bye, Dave." I wonder if he forgot my name. Robin squinted at the TV screen;
six minutes to go. She started on the last slice of pizza.
That ended suddenly. I was sure he was about to start asking me about
myself. Maybe he would have if I'd tagged along to the square. Where are you
from? Wellington. My parents are American, they moved to New Zealand in the
eighties so they'd survive a nuclear war! Where are you studying? Griffith.
What do you want to do? Something in environmental economics.
The music changed. After a few seconds the cafe filled with groans, mostly
from the floor: it was the remix of Prince's "1999", the end-of-the-world
anthem. Robin had come to quite like the song. Probably the result of
conditioning, she thought; it was being played everywhere. Someone had even
analyzed it in a Semiotics tutorial.
I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin'
Thought this mornin' was Judgement Day
"Hey look", said one of the gothics, "it's stopped raining out. Let's head
for the square."
The sky was all purple
There were people running everywhere
Tryin' to run from the destruction
You know I didn't even care
The floor people were standing up, gathering their personals, leaving in
droves. Soon the cafe was half empty. Bhajan watched them enviously.
Yes, let's head for the square. Why not? The Sikh guy was gone, and his
Chinese friends were now on opposite sides of the booth, leaning forward,
staring into each other's eyes. Robin reached down and grabbed Dave's tray and
the fantasy mag, placed them on the table, said goodbye to her booth. Get
ready for the cold ...
Outside the mall was as crowded as she'd ever seen it, with long queues
stretching outside the nightclubs. It was still raining, but only very
lightly. "1999" was playing from everywhere, from the clubs, in the place of
the usual mall Muzak, from the stereos of hot-dog vendors. Robin was reminded
of the scene from Douglas Adams, in which the Vogon's broadcast the news of
Earth's demolition from every TV and radio.
Police speaking into walkie-talkies, millenarians haranguing passers-by.
Partygoers singing along with Prince and the Revolution: "Say it one more
time! Two thousand zero zero, party over, out of time! So tonight I'm gonna
party like it's nineteen ninety-nine!"
People were converging on King George Square, where the climax of the
mainstream celebrations was taking place. All the major TV and radio stations
had broadcast teams there. As she reached the edges of the crowd, Robin saw a
dozen Aboriginals at the edge of the Square, watching silently. What were they
thinking? Prince was fading out.
1999! Don't you wanna know?
1999! Don't you wanna know?
1999! ...
There was the sound of a helicopter overhead. A resonant computer-
synthesized voice spoke from above.
"ARE YOU READY TO ENTER THE NEW MILLENNIUM, BRISBANE?"
"YES!" called the crowd.
"THEN JOIN ME IN THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. TEN ... NINE ..."
At the centre of the square a giant cube had been erected, its faces each
covered with dozens of television screens. As Robin watched it displayed the
giant blue Earth, rolling by under the space station; and then the image was
replaced by a hundred fragments: faces of the people of Earth. Women, men,
every color and race and continent.
"EIGHT ... SEVEN ... SIX ... FIVE ..."
It's real, she suddenly saw. The whole enormous world, all six billion of
us, we're really here. Together.
"FOUR ... THREE ..."
To her astonishment, she felt tears trickle down her cheeks.
"TWO ... ONE ..."
The picture of the whole Earth came back, half in light, half in shadow,
Australia still in shadow. She imagined the year 2000 as a plague sweeping
westward around the globe in quantum jumps, claiming another timezone every
hour.
"ZERO!" said the crowd. There was an electric sound. The television screens
flared blinding white. The sky was illuminated.
As the fireworks went off there was pandemonium. People hugging, cheering,
screaming. Joining hands and dancing in circles. Someone, faced turned
upwards, yelling: "We did it! We're here! We're still here, damn you!"
Someone took Robin's hand. She looked down. It was someone she'd never seen
before, a teenage girl with cropped red hair, wearing a T-shirt bearing the
motif of the double-bladed axe.
"We did it, hey," she said.
"Yeah, we did it," said Robin, and they hugged, tightly.
Did we? What have we done? I don't know. We're still here. In the arms of a
stranger, brushing tears from her cheeks, crying still, she looked up, and
watched the sky explode with purple.
[ps when this story was written Cafe Cafe was completely fictional, now there
is such a place in Brisbane! -Qix]
.../?..*...\...
\pippin\cloud\bits.not
Feelings we make up for ourselves.
We live in the Devil's playground.
Do petrol.
I got an award in 1986 for being able "to talk under water with a mouthful
of seaweed." The prize was a band-aid.
B.Y.O. Pronunciation to an anti-party
B.Y.O Sanity
public access computer room probably by the Cyberpunks
The substance of conversation that goes unremembered.
A Nutri-grain packet goes shopping.
T-shirt slogan -- "I hacked NASA, and all i got was this lousy T-shirt."
QUT UNIX, has all of 5 commands that aren't security risks, called PUNIX.
Coincidensity -- a measure of the rate at which coincidences occur
around you.
\pippin\cloud\false.txt
Within the circle of its action, every word creates that which it affirms.
Do you have:
(1) Invincible obstinacy
(2) A conscience at once hardened to crime and most prone to remorse
and fear
(3) Affected or natural ignorance
(4) Blind faith in all that is incredible
(5) An utterly false idea of god
Then Know this:
He who affirms the devil creates or makes the devil.
\pippin\cloud\conshus.not
So the Earth may not be conscious.
How did we evolve consciousness? If it evolved, what is to say that the
Earth has not evolved consciousness? Or even the cells?
It is the interactions that make the system that is the key
to it all. The human brain is supposed to be the most advanced computer known
to us. Consciousness probably evolved to be the most efficient way of
transferring data from one part of the brain to another.
If a brain can do it, why can't a computer? Or even the Earth, if the Earth is
indeed a system.
\pippin\cloud\longevit.not
LONGEVITY
We used to live much longer than we do now.
We, human beings, are supposed to be the only animal that has
sex when the female is not "in heat", fertile.
Woman ovulate once a month. Once they could have children in a
month. Gestation was only a month, and children took much less time to
grow up. So women could have children 12 times a year (groan).
But why would they need this? Living much longer than we used
too?
The catastrophes. When the humans were down, they had more babies.
Since we are not really endangered at the moment, gestation takes a long
time. And we don't live very long.
After a catastrophe, when the human population is devastated,
the women can have more children due to shorter gestation, and we would
live longer. The number is people on the earth is proportional to the
quality of life ie the length of life.
Perhaps evolution will only occur when a certain number of
species have became extinct. Like after a catastrophe.
\pippin\cloud\chat.not
What would it be like to talk to every person in the world, that has
ever lived and will live, one person per day? How long would it take?
Is this question relevent? We could have all the time that would be
needed. Have we already done this, and this idea is just a memory?
\pippin\cloud\amnesia.ide
THE DAY OF THE KILLER TOMATOES FROM DJEMFI
"I think I will go to Xahito today," said Sean. He jacked in
and began to create a new world called Xahito.
Sean was not to realize that a giant god-like science-fiction writer
called Dave was going to drop a piano on his head later that day.
"I think I will go to a New Planet today," thought Sean. "Somewhere
very far away. Somewhere so far away that we can't even get there yet. It is
beyond the realms of light-speed and suspended animation." Sean pulled a old
keyboard forward from a desk full of clutter, and attached it to an equally
antiquated terminal. He projected into the terminal, dropped his fingers on
the keyboard without actually looking at it, and came up with a name for his
planet. "Xahito." He didn't have a cat. Otherwise, he might have got the cat
to walk on the keyboard and produced a name that way. He stared at the name
for a long time, letting the new planet grow in his mind. He decided to
pronounce it with a Z sound, like Za-Hee-toe. As in tomato. "And maybe all
the creatures on Xahito could be afraid of the Giant Tomatoes," he thought to
himself. "They can come from the Planet, Djemfi. The "D" would silent of
course. Pronounced Jem-fee."
Presently, Sean observed that he wasn't using the keyboard anymore.
The Giant Killer Tomatoes had invaded the planet Xahito many thousands
of years before. The dominant life form on Xahito had been a race that called
themselves "the Wise Ones" in our tongue, or "Flythes" in theirs. The Flythes
practiced a form of non-violent society, so they had been nearly decimated by
the arrival of the Djemfi. What the Djemfi did not know was that Xahito itself
hated Tomatoes, and was secretly plotting to invent a herbicide that would wipe
them out. It was allergic to Tomato soup, so that was not an option.
Xahito was not ruling out the possiblity that a passing comet might
bring a bug to the planet, that was ravenously hungry for some Tomato Plant.
Since it was a little difficult to predict comets colliding into you, it decided
to invest most of its time in "encouraging" all of the minds on itself to go
into agriculture, or botanical chemistry.
Sean let a thought grow in his mind. The carbon dioxide content of the
planet's atmosphere had greatly increased since the arrival of the Tomatoes.
The Tomatoes actually engineered the atmosphere of the planet to make it more
favourable for plant life. The higher life forms, like animals and Flythes, had
their population kept at an equilibrium low level so that they would not
jepordize the quality of life of the plants.
\pippin\cloud\roaches.ide
THE DAY OF THE ROACHES
Cockroaches actually come from Venus. We hate them so much
because the memory of cockroaches comes from the collective unconscious.
The memory is of the meteorite that brought the roaches here and
smashing into Earth causing all sorts of catastrophes.
The roaches were the last surviving life form on Venus.
Well. They can survive being nuked in a microwave oven. Why couldn't
they survive the climate of Venus?
\pippin\cloud\babel.ide
THE STORY OF THE TOWER OF BABEL
It is said that the first people spoke one language and wanted
to make a monument to mankind because they were so wonderful. The
"language" that they spoke was not one language, but telepathy.
We have lost telepathy. We had it before. That is why we know
what it is.
\pippin\poems\alone.poe
June 19, 1992
John Woodley's House, Sunshine Beach.
BEING ALONE
To Be Alone
To Be Quiet
How long before the quietness seeps into your soul?
Can U stand it?
Will it drive you mad?
How well do U know yur own thoughts?
Are they yur friends?
Or will they drive you mad?
The silence sinks in
into the mind.
Like rain soaking into the earth.
But there is no silence.
There are crickets outside,
The fridge talks to itself.
The clock ticks.
your tinitus will not be still.
If you listen carefully, the other sounds will come in.
The occasional car, the people yelling outside.
A cat fight, and the loser mourning
crying his heart out to the moon
But the moon is impassive
if she hears the caterwaul,
she does not tell.
But can you stand the silence?
Or will it beat you?
Drive U mad?
Can you find the stillness
And hold it?
And cherish the company of your own thoughts?
For they get lonely sometimes.
\pippin\poems\rain.rav
Albion train station, March 4, 1989
Why is the rain so utterly depressing? Is it because of the
grey? that there is no colour? Then it would be the grey, the lack of
colour, that is depressing. Why is grey depressing? Is it because you
get wet? but then people get wet in the shower and they don't mind
that. Is it damp clothes that stick to skin and turn cold? COLD but
the sound of rain is comforting. It is hard to describe, drip is so
inadequate. or patter. Impossible to describe. When it's raining
thoughts turn to sun and being light and warm. Why are some colours
warm and others aren't? Picture a warm green or a cold red. Then try
to picture a warm blue, or a cold orange. The earth likes rain. So
do trees, and flowers and grass and others. Ducks and frogs like it.
Why do we like dry?
\pippin\poems\dark.poe
THE DARK
(The evil dark)
Then perhaps the darkness will creep into your soul.
The darkness, the void.
The fear that drives you to noise and chaos.
The utter blackness, the grinning darkness, yawning cavern
It will steal your soul, and your energy.
It knows you better than yourself,
for it is your Shadow Self.
Can you confront your Shadow Self, all the things you don't want to be
and are.
For if u know yurself, u can drive the darkness away.
But if you can't...
It just sits back and laughs
at you.
When you flick on the light or some music,
Because you want to stop thinking
or to think in peace,
to drive away the fear.
The coldness, the darkness is like the cold stone churches
that you went to as a child. that frightened you.
The coldness, the darkness erode you, your thoughts, your emotions,
replacing you with itself.
...ooo000ooo...
Imagine if U will a room, full of happiness,
and warmth and light and a spiral staircase.
The top of the staircase is dark.
U must go to the top of the staircase
And face the screaming, smothering darkness.
U must not resist it. If you resist it, it will laugh at you
And plucks secretly at another thought.
But you can welcome it. Open your arms, and your heart, embrace it.
It will become familiar.
As it becomes familiar, it will be a friend to you,
and will keep you company.
It will talk to the Great Mulberry Depression when it comes
to visit you.
And they will love you.
It will become the warm, soothing darkness
when nothing else gives you solace
from your thoughts
and your broken dreams.
the blues
When the Great Mulberry Depression comes to visit,
Invite it in. Introduce it to the warm, soothing dark
Introduce it to your pain.
Then sit at their feet and listen to them,
Their thoughts are not your thoughts, but you can make them
your thoughts
There are no words in them.
Just a feeling of nothingness
Of Voidness,
Of the Grey Land of the Uglydig
But feeling
the feelings are rich,
intense,
like the colours of an opal
These can never be yours,
They will come and go as they please
As they see that you need them.
\pippin\poems\grey.poe
Grey
Grey is, indeed, a strange and abominable colour. It is not the colour
of death, but of the underworld, the colour of everything that lives
away from the sun, everything that lives in the shadows. It is the
fishes' colour, the reptiles' colour, the colour of those who hunt in
the twilight. Grey is wet fungi and corruption, grey is snails, grass
snakes, vultures, hyaenas, wolves. Grey is not a blow on the cheek, but
a pressure - like that of a blanket - over your whole face. Grey is the
most evil colour in the world because of the things of which it reminds
you. It is a shivering, shuddering, plaintive, perspiring symphony of
memories of all that was and is over and done with. It sings the grey
paper you yourself put round your school books, the books you took from
your worn satchel and read in stealth under the grey roof of corrugated
iron in the grey schoolyard during the grey break; it sings of porridge,
grey fish soup, grey woollen socks and grey knee-breeches, sings a
gasping song of pouring grey rain and grey clay beneath oil-leather
boots and grey sand between the cans in the backyard; but its saddest,
most heart-rending song is that of rainy days, of the ordinary everyday,
when the streets were shiny and grey, and you, as a child, sat in the
window watching the grey water in the gutter transporting sand and
matches and cigarette-stubs and slush and paper and withered leaves
away to the drumming drain with the iron-grating over it, and of Sunday
afternoons when it was raining outside and the room lay in a
semi-darkness and you had to sit quite still, because somebody wanted an
afternoon nap after eating steak and apricot blancmange and cream, and
there you sat at the table, from which the cloth had been taken, doing
your prep. or reading a Boy Scout book and clasping your throat to
stifle the cry of tortured despair that was rising it it, making you
angry and full of hate.
The colour of grey reminds one of wet and moisture, of sleet and
rain and mist, of spates and flooding; but it also reminds one of heat
and drought, of scorched dusty fields, of sizzling asphalt and concrete
and burning sand and dry lips. Grey may be the colour of the grey smoke
rising from a campfire in the woods, or of a new factory optimistically
started in a village, but do not forget that grey is also the colour of
the blanket of smoke that covers our towns and big industrial centres
and not only blackens the walls of the factories and tenements, but
sticks to people's skins and to their hearts.
-- Ash Grande
\pippin\poems\madness.poe
MADNESS
The wind! It blows where it wills!!
Catch it! Catch it! Try to harness it.
The wind all of all the days drive
drives the thoughts and feelings
from your heart
and leaves it cold.
@}-,'->---
I must love what I destroy and destroy the thing I love.
Use it, abuse it, squeeze it dry, grok it.
Leave it dry empty shell to be driven by the cold,
aching wind. The hungry wind to dry it out.
And burn it. Let the ashes fall
at your feet.
---(--(*
The MADness
The madness, it is all madness, it has to be madness
the darkness that pull you into the black hole
of itself.
it hates, it plagues you.
It throws its thoughts at you, darts to pierce you.
and the dance the mad kaleidoscope
crashes, crashes, craves your energy and your thoughts
Begs and pleads to be fed, like some lost puppy
looking for crumbs
to fill the gnawing void inside itself, that will never be filled
until it is changed
...ooo000ooo...
Everything changes.
inevitable, ineffible, unknown, and misunderstood
Fear of the top of the staircase holds us back.
Even the grinning darkness is held back
by its own fear of the unknown.
It hates itself. It hates me. It hates you.
Even misunderstands itself.
But we change it. We will. We must.
Or it will change us. But who can tell which
will change the other.
It
doesn't even matter which.
It is the inexorable pulling of life to itself
that says:
We Must Change.
It is a Race Against Time
And Against Each Other
@}-,'->---
For within you is a candle
A candle of light that will light the way
There is always a flame
a single solitary flame
that will not
go away.
June 19, 1992
John Woodley's house, Sunshine Beach
ooo /=+*o0o*+=\ ooo
\pippin\poems\life.poe
1983
I
glance up.
I see as
I climb to the peak,
An eagle, wheeling
near its
brow.
I
look down,
long and clear.
Ground so far below.
Something I see
there on the
ground.
It
is a
bitter chill
Whipping wind. I
will go down now.
So far to
go. Its
cold
\pippin\poems\cliff.poe
March 12, 1989
The Cliffs of Shorncliffe
Alone. To be the last person on the earth. To look over the
sea from the cliffs. To watch the sun go down in the east. To watch
the moon rise. To watch the silver spill over the crests of the waves.
To watch the tide go out and expose the crescent sand bars. To sit
still and breathe the air. To walk and walk and to not go anywhere. To
climb to the bottom of cliff and to the top. To watch strata of
sandstone and shale be laid down over millions of years. To feel the
plants and the stone and the water splashing your soles. To live, to
be. To be nothing and anything and someone.
To be utterly alone. You are able to do anything at all. There
is no one with which to confer. Just you. And your thoughts, your
emotions, your spirit, your body, and God. Nothing to clutter you.
Nothing to hinder you and the earth. Mind overflows. You are no longer
the ultimate. You are only one in a mass of creation. A mass of
earthly voices reaching out to God. Perfect communion. There is the
potential to understand so much.
To watch pink and orange, and gold on the edges of the
thunderhead cloud made of ice-cream. To watch the stars come out
blinking at night.
\pippin\poems\rok.poe
Queen St Mall, Saturday, March 11, 1989
The Migmatite
It is a wonderful flowing, rhyolitic rock. Some finely
crystallized with large chunks of quartz, rushing, violent, molten,
acidic rock. It is actually going somewhere, but it is still. It is a
large plate, the whole picture, telling the story of magma. How was it
formed? Some rock overtaking the others, layers and layers of lava and
magma, piling on top of each other, being exposed, flowing on, cooling
down, chilling, crystallizing, large and small. It is a record of a
moment in time or many many moments in time. The illusion of perpetual
motion, of endless energy, of never stopping. It goes on and it will
never stop. It will never stop telling its story. A frozen moment.
\pippin\poems\sun.poe
Where The Sunlight Is
Queensland's body has two main arteries. Cut one and it bleeds
sunshine. Cut the other and it bleeds waves. Sometimes the ocean is a
smooth blue, corrugated by long lines of south easterly ground swell
that swing in slow motion on to the sunniest, prettiest point breaks on
the face of the earth. And the wind just keeps blowing from the
south day after day, and the swell just keeps coming day after day.
Sometimes for a week. Sometimes longer. You set the same pace as the
waves. Live the same rhythm as the tides. You take off your watch and
put it away in the bottom of your bag. If you're working, you throw in
your job until the swell stops. You get up early and go home late, and
in between you surf for hours and you lie in the sunshine. And the
sunshine gets inside your head and your chest and flows through your
veins. It's a commitment of a sort. You give your whole self to the
sea and to the waves and ask nothing but to be allowed to do it. Places
like Kirra Point tube themselves silly, day by day. And you get in
there where the sunlight is, shafts that flash momentarily through tube
roofs and then are eaten. Kirra tubes longer and hollower than anywhere
else. Fast and heavy over shallow sand on the right tides.
And Greenmount Point eats surfboards. Breakfast, lunch, and
tea, it survives on a diet of crushed rails and knocked out fins and
blood from unwary bodies. But it's so beautiful in the evenings.
Yellow light and dark water to bounce it off and soft semi-hollow
four-five footers gurgling on the point and running out over the bank
into the bay quiet. Each day is complete when there's surf. You rise
early and surf. Then you eat and surf all afternoon. When you leave
the surf as it gets dark, you don't talk much and you don't think much,
you just go home and have tea and maybe read or play cards or do nothing
and then you go to sleep. A healthy satisfying exhaustion in your body
and weighing it down. And you know tomorrow's going to be the same.
But you don't even think about it. Just take it when it comes. It's
good. It's good.
-- John Hogan, "Surfing World"
\pippin\poems\pig.poe
1983
A Tribute To The Pig
"A tribute to a pig?" I hear you ask. Yes, the pig! The pig is
a magnificent animal, and we really have the wrong idea about them.
Where would we be without smoked ham, fat pork, and bacon that is so
popular with eggs? Pigskin shoes, handbags, and wallets are practically
a necessity. Yes, the pig is one of the most versatile animals that God
has given us.
On the farm the pig is a pioneer. If you have some weedy plot
of ground that you think is useless, put some pigs on it. He will clear
the ground, plough it up, and manure it all at the same time. He will
enjoy himself and derive sustenance from it. He is the animal that will
blaze new trails on your farm.
As I said before, we have the wrong idea about the pig. We have
sayings like, "He eats like a pig.", or "That is only fit for the
pigs." Maybe, some of them do apply, but we still have the wrong idea
about the pig. We may think that the pig is a dirty animal, but really
he is the cleanest of all the domesticated animals. His environment
maybe one of mud and dirt, but if he were given a clean environment, he
would keep it very clean. The pig is really a magnificent animal.
Raising pigs is a very profitable enterprise. The Irishmen
call him "the gentleman who pays the rent." Pigs are easy to keep,
easy to feed and fun to have. Raising does not depend on the weather,
and in good years and bad, pigs will pay yours and their bills. The pig
is an animal that well-deserves a tribute.
\qix\essay86.txt
[essay excerpted from TGS annual '86]
"WE CREATED THE WORLD"
We live in a world of abstractions and symbolisms. No two cultures
express the basic human drives in the same manner, but every culture hides
them with elaborate convention. Aggression is released by mock fights between
Kenyan warriors, by chess games between Soviet grandmasters. Vicarious
excitement is provided by gladiatorial combat, or the A-team. And so forth.
The very act of communication involves comparable abstraction: patterns of
ink or sound carry "meaning" from one mind to another. Like clay sculpture
or high-rise construction, these are all ways in which we shape our
world.
But we do not lose our way in this jungle of abstraction. We move through it
with the unconscious confidence of a native, taking for granted the
idiosyncrasies and moral assumptions of our society. These conventions are
with us so constantly they never need explanation. Like household furniture,
we are comfortable in their presence, they are symbols of tradition and
security to which we become attached, we are not even aware of them most of
the time. Some may seem quaint or get in the way, but we accept these with
good humour.
However, all our laws and languages and libraries are of human construction,
even if they are the work of master craftsmen. We are the first to have built
our own world, and it has changed us. Our artifices, mental and physical, have
become so real to us that we think of them as defining the fundamental nature
of the world rather than being structures we have imposed upon reality,
structures which might have been formed in many other ways. The world we have
created was only potential until we came along.
Philosophy is an attempt to understand the world; trying to understand it,
we have formed ideas like essence, causation, experience and so on. Then we
have asked ourselves about the nature of these things. While we never agree
about the answers, there is always the tacit assumption that there *is* a
correct answer. But these are concepts *we* formulated, which we have no
reason to believe exist outside our minds. So how can we assume that questions
about them will have one true answer? There may be several answers logically
consistent with everything else we believe, among which choice can only be
arbitrary, or no such answers at all.
When we read, we do not have to remind ourselves that these blotches of ink
before us are intended to convey meaning. It seems natural to us that
something should "stand for" something else. In fact, we go further - we
confuse the symbol with the thing represented. Human minds tend to form links
of association, and in our mind things and their names are bound. Most of the
time we think in words, living as we do in such a verbally crowded
environment. But words are our creation, our way of dividing the world into
manageable chunks, and are not somehow inherent in the richly complex reality
they try to represent. They are not even the result of a systematic attempt to
describe the world; they are centuries' accumulation of shifts in usage and
meaning - so is it surprising when communication is imperfect, when feelings
or ideas seem inexpressible?
The growth of science has been more orderly than that of language. Science
has been the discovery and refinement of patterns and mechanisms that might
explain the world's workings. Scientists have professed strict objectivity
until recently. But behind all of traditional science was one assumption -
that even if we cannot know every detail of existence, at least we can
understand its guiding principles. Only in the 20th century has this view
been undermined. In mathematics it has been shown that there is no system of
logic which can infallibly determine the truth or falsehood of any statement
about the counting numbers - for each system there is an undecidable
statement. But if there are things we cannot know about 1, 2, 3, ... - our own
creations - it becomes a very real possibility that reality is humanly
indescribable, in that it is too complicated for human beings to understand in
a more than superficial manner.
We tend to assume that there is some absolute system of ethics which will
provide a `right' response in every situation. We are disappointed with the
law when it displays less-than-Solomonic wisdom. But even if a code of ethics
is developed which is the kindest and fairest possible, it may be unable to
cope with dilemmas brought about by the new situations and technologies we
continually create.
We created the world. While we should keep aiming for our ideals of truth
and justice, we must realise that perfection may not be attainable for us.
While we keep working towards our absolutes, we should enjoy the little
imperfections like love and loyalty and remember not to expect too much of
anything human.
<*...^^^...*>
\qix\bent.rav
[This will be an attempted transcript of Side A of a tape labelled "TAPE",
recorded at the Bent St home of Jodie Eden in 1990, found at 23 Ada St on the
night of 27 July 1991...]
MITCH: ... um you have a surface folded over on itself so you <follow> a
particular path and so you have a dis ... continuous [MALE VOICE: mmm ...]
um drop, um ... which is like your stack collapsing. A third thing is
this book I'm reading at the moment, the quantum-mechanical one, The Quantum
Self, which, um, is talking [JODIE: That sounds interesting ...] about things
you'd find interesting, yeah.
Something else interesting which came up after I read that book ...
There's a thing called a Frohlich system, mentioned in the book discovered by
Doctor Frohlich, which is a type of resonant behavior you get in biological
systems. It's like um, in a supercounductor or a laser you get lots of
particles all behaving as one, their um ... their wave-functions, in
quantum-mechanical terms, all merge so that their properties become
interdependent and they all cooperate. And this Doctor Frohlich has discovered
the same things happening in certain types of, of biological matter. Um, and
this author's proposing that consciousness, the integrated aspect of
consciousness is a sort of a quantum-mechanical correlation, a Frohlich system
occurring in the brain. Now, funny thing, just after I read that book and came
across Frohlich system, um, I ran into Rodger and he lent me a photocopy of an
article on a "deconstructive a/theology" ... ah, I won't try to explain what
all that's about but it just mentioned, that ... um ... ah, Nietzche, when he
was - like, Nietzsche is now regarded as the founder of postmodernism in
certain senses, I won't even try to explain what postmodernism is -
GAVIN: <Nietzche> wrote some really weird sort of stuff -
MITCH: He wrote something called The Gay Sciences - Anyway, 'gay' in German
is 'frohlich' ... and, like, 'frohlich' is what this book which Rodger had
lent me this review of was, sort of, all about. Like it was about cultivating
a 'frohlich' attitude of mind. So, here was 'frohlich' and 'mind' linked
together in two different ways on the one day, which, was an interesting
experience.
Does that happen to you all the time? You come across, ideas, which sort of
coincidentally integrate?
JODIE: Yeah, yeah, all the time, it's just amazing.
[several voices at once]
GAVIN: I just plod along through life, you know ...
[laughter]
JODIE: Yeah, I think it's observation though, it's like...
[Gavin I think makes joke and laughs]
MITCH: I don't think so ... I think there's a transpersonal integrative
force behind it all.
JODIE: You really think so?
MITCH: mm.
GAVIN: ... transpersonal integrative ...
JODIE: Sometimes I think that ...
GAVIN: ... like a force bringing people together, [MITCH: Um...] or ideas
sort of, [MITCH: ... yeah, why not?] sort of having an influence over the
probability of two people coming to[gether] ... yeah ...
JODIE: Well, what I was thinking before, you know how I said we have to get
rid of the thing of ideas ownership, well um what, how I see it is it's a bit
like the idea of ownership of kids. You know, you produce the kids sort of
thing. But, as soon as they're born you've got to see them as, as people of
their own. And like ideas are the same thing, you know. YOU gave birth to the
idea but it came from lots of other things before as well. And you've just
got to let it go <on> in the world and do whatever, whatever it's got to do.
And, um, maybe the ideas are really like lifeforms, maybe they're like actual
living things in your brain, but lie dormant, or come up at certain times and,
at the same time, maybe they do have some sort of effect out there in the real
world to bring things towards you - The idea is so strong that it wants some
evidence, from the scientific world, and so you go into a bookshop and you see
The Tao of Physics or something like that, and um ...
MITCH: Yeah, that doesn't help explain how two things can come together,
like, um, ah .. well, I mean that, tghat, for instance ... one of, one of the
authors who I read sometimes is a computer scientist called Jacques Vallee
who's interested in the psychology of UFO experiences. And he was once
researching a medieval writer called Melchizedek, and at the moment he was
going to a library to um, this was in New York to look up Melchizedek, um. He
was picked up by a taxi driver called Melchizedek. Now, um, how does the idea
of 'Melchizedek' in his mind sort of pick that out? [JODIE: Oh, oh ...] See, I
think that if, if, if this can be understood at all, either it's going to be
understood in terms of, of the <?? seffian> idea, like that there's this
invisible conspiracy to arrange things, ah in such a way as you believe them
to be. Or else, um, something which * might * make sense in terms of quantum
mechanics and that is that, in a certain sense the future can shape the past,
so that, that things come together so that these things will happen, because
there, there does seem to be a sort of potential for that to happen, that, in
some sense an event here can ... can ... because it has to be, things will
logically be so that they arrange for it even though they're sort of
improbable. That's why I think chaos is sort of important, because it's the,
it's the crack through which this can operate, if anything. Like, if the world
was not only, um ... um, physically determined, but also practically
determined, so that we could always know what was going to happen, then there
wouldn't be any opportunity for a meaningful coincidence to happen, but
because even if it is deterministic, it's still in principle, unpredictable,
ah, then that gives, ah, the organizing force room to maneuver, to surprise us
with things.
JODIE: Yeah. Oh that's beautiful! You, oh, you just saying exactly what I've
been trying to say for about, three days. But, I've got ... what did you say?
It gives us a chance to be surprised, the fact that, it's to do with ... it's
magic as well, because, because ... we haven't believed in magic all of this
time because there's been all these other ways of explaining things, but magic
is a really important concept, because it allows new things to come out, new
things to emerge ...?
MITCH: Well, I wasn't saying that [JODIE: You weren't saying...] but that's
something which could be said ...
GAVIN: Another, another thing is, um, <his> sort of purpose of life came
down to being, fountain of surprises. That life would be a fountain of
surprises. See, he had <prescience> ... there's not prescience in the first
<lot> of the book, or books < ??? > out of six ... So, one of the guys in
there had this problem that he knew his future; he got to a point, he got to
some sort of, he got to a critical, nodal point sort of. And he knew, he could
see before he got there he knew that this was going to be pretty severe, and
he got there, as he thought ... <???> ... he could see his future, he knew
everything that was going to happen to him in advance, he knew his future
absolutely, he had perfect prescience. So then his life was boring and
couldn't be a fountain of surprises. And he said about trying to destroy the
potential for this state to exist because it could lead to stagnation, and in
the end, there's, there's Leto the God-Emperor, who's a worm [laughs] and
he's huge, and he's the God-Emperor of the universe for ten thousand years,
and he enforces a golden age of absolute, sort of, stability on, on this
galactic society to teach them a lesson [Mitch laughs], that this is not what
[MITCH: Stability is so boring] - yeah, that it's basically, you know, <he was
on> an anti-boredom trip, and <that> stability is boring, <they need> change.
And he got, he deliberately went about researching, trying to create these
people whose futures could not be predicted, who were outside the prescience
that. The prescience was discovered, right, and then it existed, and then,
you know, people went around trying to discover ways to avoid it. And they
had <node> ships and [JODIE indistinct] it's really good, [JODIE, something
about boredom] yeah, it's a really good book 'cause it's got all different
sorts of factions, like he's got the Bene Geserrit which are, females, and
they're all sort of into human powers, and developing human potential, and
abilities, and there's the Tleilaxu which play with things in tanks and
stuff like that, and they're shape changers and so they play with genetics and
that kind of stuff, and they can grow things in their axolotl tanks, and they
can give you, you know, cybernetic eyes and stuff like that. Then there's the
Guild, which operate the transport, they've got complete monopoly on the
transport, and he's really into power struggles as well. The Guild have
absolute power over all transport, and so they develop these <node> ships
which can't be tracked by prescients ... <???> that's what I said before ...
so there are all these different factions .. and he, he postulates, like it's
in the far future, and one of the early things is that ah, there's no
computers, and there's no atomic weapons. They exist, but there was a
<?? Valkyrian Jihad> in which everyone smashed up the computers and they made
this big pronouncement that Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a
human mind. So, he's got this far, far-future vision that doesn't involve any
computers or robots and doesn't involve atomic weapons 'cause there's, there's
a convention against ...
JODIE: That's an interesting idea, um, not being able to create a computer
like the human mind, separating tools and the mind, focusing on the important
points.
GAVIN: Yeah, like, i.e. making a deliberate decision we're not going to make
- [drowned out by]
MITCH: Yeah, well, yeah the idea is I think that would sort of destroy
culture in a sense that you would, um, if you have something which is like a
person but is empty, um, then ...
JODIE: You wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
MITCH: Well, more than that... like, you can treat that in any way you like,
maybe. That might be part of the rationale. And so that, if you then start
treating *people* like that as well ... [JODIE: Yeah, yeah ...] not a
desirable consequence. So .. you issue your pronouncement.
[a few seconds of silence or murmurs]
JODIE: Yeah, I think laws are -
GAVIN: I think another major point is that they could become competitive.
[MITCH: Oh right ..] Suppose you do do that, then it's not such a smart idea,
you could have signed your death warrant of the species, [JODIE: I don't - ]
which is a very old sort of concept [JODIE: I don't see that as ... <??>]
JODIE: I don't really see that as, it's sort of like -
GAVIN: Not necessarily < ??? >.
JODIE: I read this book called, ah, Amusing Ourselves To Death. It's a
really good book, I've got to find it actually, and it's all about television
and the medium, and the society and everything, and anyway he says that, you
know, Huxley said that - no, Orwell said that, What we hate will kill us, or
destroy us, and, you know, Huxley said, What we love will destroy us, and
the book was saying this is that Huxley might have been right. And that, you
know, television and all of these classic entertaiments [GAVIN: Yeah! There
you go ...] are <drugging us like soma ??>.
GAVIN: And, <this is> the good of evil, and the evil of good.
JODIE: Yeah ... [GAVIN laughs] Yeah ... ah, what was I going to say?
MITCH: Amusing yourselves to death.
GAVIN: Yeah ...
JODIE: .. what did you just say before about ... oh yeah, that the trouble
is, that the computers might take over and, I think that's like saying,
Orwell's point of view, that's the thing we fear, but I think that's much less
likely to destroy us. The things we fear are much less likely to destroy us
than the things that we love, because if you can't tell the difference -
If you, you just sit there and you hate television and everything but you keep
on watching it anyway because it's such a passive, enjoyable thing, it does
much more damage than something someone who is deliberately restricting you.
[softly] I don't know ...
MITCH: Can I mention something here? [GAVIN: <..so insidous..>] This guy,
who I think Adrian was translating or reading or whatever when he was talking
to Rodger, Jean Baudrillard, he - He sounds really interesting, he's like an
inversion of Marx. Like Marx was saying that you have this industrial society
where everyone is, is alienated because, um ... [birdsong in background] you
have capitalism which puts an exchange value on things but that's not the real
use-value, that was Marx's invention, the concept of the real value of a
commodity in relation to the real world instead of this artificial system of
prices. He said because we couldn't use things at their use values but instead
we had to use exchange values then we weren't really, or we were alienated,
separated from the things we produced, [JODIE: Oh yeah!] and that the workers
would realize this collectively and therefore that would lead to the
revolution, and they would establish a regime of use value rather than
exchange value. Baudrillard says that's wrong. Marx didn't overturn
classical economics far enough, like classical economics said that exchange
value IS use value, Marx said exchange value is not use value, Baudrillard
says, um, exchange value is not desirable, um, he argues that the real,
social - [JODIE: <.. got to find> this guy?] you won't be able to find him in
the library anyway, he writes in French, he's very pessimistic and there's
only one English book which Rodger reckons has been stolen, so [JODIE laughs]
all we can talk about is what other people have said about him. But anyway,
um, he argues that social functioning is "best" - I mean, he dislikes words
like functioning, um, when you indulge in voluntary exchange, when you give
gifts [JODIE: Yes!] and you reciprocate and so on.
GAVIN: ... Chinese do that. Chinese have a gift-giving economy. Neil was
telling me about it, he's writing to [MITCH, unclear] <???> stuffs up their
central planning, of the economy, because there's this whole gift-giving
economy [MITCH, indistinct] which is not ... is not counted. [GAVIN laughs]
[ringing noise]
MITCH: Well Baudrillard reckons that every time you do something like that
you're striking a blow against, um, every sort of measuring, classifying,
codifying regime. Anyway, his argument against Marx is that, that um, Marx
didn't go far enough because he's still supposing that you have to put a value
on things whereas what you want is spontaneity and so on. Ah, so, he argues
that we used to have societies where you had symbolic exchange, and a symbol
is a sort of a ... well, it's like a force of nature, so the sun in say Aztec
culture was a symbol because it was a force of life and death at the same time
whereas he reckons that symbols nowadays have been replaced by signs which
are, have replaced ambivalence by equivalence. They're all exclusively
positive, so nowadays the sun is simply, a source of good and warmth and so
on, and it's opposed to non-sun, this is like the sort of images you get out
of a media culture, so on. He reckons that because they no longer have this
ambivalence and their own energy and drive that that's what makes modern life
so deadening that, we live under the regime of the sign rather than the
symbol. But Baudrillard doesn't think that we can return to the regime of the
symbol, he thinks that's impossible, so his solution or rather what he thinks
will happen is that the masses - um, will drive the regime of the sign to its
end by um developing it too far, so in other words they'll become more and
more passive and just consume things continually until lives will become
totally meaningless and that will make um the regime of the sign collapse,
because it will be driven to its extreme. So he argues that for people
nowadays, um consumption is meaningless and politics is just entertainment,
but that for politics and production to continue they need at least, or
politics needs, the sort of the pretense of meaning, and production needs an
alibi, of value, but if those things are taken to their extremes then it will
sort of bring about an apocalypse in which everything collapses, so
Baudrillard's really sort of a nihilistic thinker, like, according to one
account of what I've read - [GAVIN: What, and he provides no sort of - ] No,
he's not interested in a more positive society, he just wants to bring about
the end as quickly as possible.
JODIE: That's really interesting, because that sounds exactly what I'm
talking about in the Fun Park except I've got the positive thing of trying to
turn it into something fun. And, making money out of it as well.
MITCH: That's why he sounds like a really interesting writer to me -
[GAVIN and JODIE agree.]
GAVIN: He's really into semiotics as well.
MITCH: Um .. well, I think .. more than that, like he, he ... I think he
would agree with semioticians that their account of society is correct, that
you have [JODIE: What is semiotics anyway?] these signs, semiotics is the
study of signs and how they determine things, they determine the way people
think, what they do so on.
GAVIN: It goes, gets into ... it lends itself nicely to this media sort of
<rave> [indistinct voice, possibly BRETT] <??> all about how people are
oppressed by the way things are portrayed in the media and stuff.
JODIE: Women draped over cars and stuff like that ...
GAVIN: Yeah, this is a sign which means, bla-bla-bla and <has> people give
you stuff ...
MITCH: Yeah ... but ah I think the difference between Baudrillard and
say, someone, a semiotician, is that a semiotician is just trying to
scientifically describe signs, whereas Baudrillard actively opposes it ..
or, rather, he doesn't really oppose it but he wants to bring it to as swift a
conclusion as possible [GAVIN laughs] by embracing it in the extreme... Found
that a fascinating position for someone to hold, because it's so inverted on
everything you would usually think ... I think that's also a clue to
understanding a lot of the other people Rodger refers to, like Derrida and
deconstruction and so on. 'Cause, what they're doing, is they're inverting the
usual priority we place on things so that for instance they're saying that
culture preceds nature, something like that, which sounds really odd in the
West because we're used to thinking of um, ah, animal drives like sex, hunger
and so on as being somehow more fundamental than, um, the impositions of
culture, whereas, say Baudrillard for instance, rejects the notion that, um,
the struggle for survival preceds this exchange thing? So he would say that
for primitve cultures, if people eat or speak or drink or whatever, those
things are done um for the purpose of the exchange or not at all. So in other
words even if they're going to starve or something like that they tend to sort
of die for cultural reasons in a sense, so even at the earliest stage of human
beings, the culture is still there in a primary sense, rather than a secondary
sense ... But, yeah, there's lots of fascinating ideas there and all this was
in that book Superstructuralism which you said was really boring. That's where
I got all of this from
JODIE: Superstructuralism? Oh...
MITCH: Remember? You -
JODIE: Oh, I only read about half a page of it.
MITCH: Yeah, and you thought it was really boring. I remember you saying.
[JODIE: Yeah ...] [MITCH laughs] That's something else I thought was really
funny.
JODIE: Oh no, that's awful ... I, I've got to stop, I've got to overcome
this thing. [GAVIN laughs] <???> people... I just hate it, when you get um...
I think there was a sentence in Feyerabend's book that really put me off, I
don't think I've read anything since [MITCH laughs] that sentence, because it
was so difficult to understand, oh. I should find it, it was about, you know
about six lines long, this sentence ... and I wrote it all down, and tried to
work out what he was saying, and it was such a simple thing. He'd actually
repeated himself in a much more complicated way. He'd explained something
through an example, and then he summarized it in a really complicated way
using big words making it difficult to understand. An idea that had already
been clear to me; and I thought 'Oh, he's just repeating himself!' You know,
it was - [sound of crows in background]
GAVIN: Getting more ... Getting more text out of his ideas ... [laughs]
JODIE: Yeah ... I guess, I guess you should just look at it as like
everyone, [GAVIN: You can't be perfect.] yeah, everyone's not perfect, the
important thing is his ideas not his style, and - [whistling in background]
GAVIN: He was interested in getting published, just like a lot of other
people who write things that are not <as> worthwhile.
JODIE: But what I think I'd like to do, except for this idea that certain
people own ideas you know, I'd really like to rewrite Feyerabend or rewrite
de Bono, you know, <as> the pop-up de Bono [GAVIN: Yeah] or [GAVIN: The
comic-book Feyerabend] the comic-book Feyerabend or something like that, um,
to get a, trying specifically to get across their ideas. Or wouldn't have to
be their ideas. It'd be just to do it in a more interesting way <then> anyone
could read it.
MITCH: That's something I want to do with computers some time this semester,
like I want to get an Amstrad like Dayalan's - I don't know if you've ever
seen his, it's a laptop a portable one - and I want to learn about the maths
behind chaos and neural networks and so on, and then write some software while
I'm doing that which will allow people to sort of play with it and see the
basics as they go [JODIE: Oh yeah] - I think that's what computers are really
<useful> for -
GAVIN: <I saw in Scientific> American how to do a thing with the Mandelbrot
set.
JODIE: Really! How long was it?
GAVIN: Well, I mean, way before cha - like in Grade Eleven or Twelve, I read
this article in Scientific American about the Mandelbrot set, I think that's
when he first discovered it maybe. <?? it's about the> right timing. Anyway,
it gave the, it gave the formula sets you know, and I think it might even have
had some code ... anyway, it told you how to set you know [MITCH: Yeah] <??>
this program this formula -
MITCH: Was it in the Mathematical Games column?
GAVIN: Yeah, that, they might have had that Mandelbrot set article and then
the Mathematical Games in a subsequent issue ...
MITCH: Yeah, I think I remember that ...
GAVIN: '86, '87, something like that, and then away you go with your
computer graphics, and Dayalan's graphics would probably be good enough to
get really pretty Mandelbrot sets.
MITCH: Ah ... I don't know ...
GAVIN: You don't know ...
MITCH: Yeah, I want to do something more than that, like there are all these
concepts like chaos, strange attractor - um, bifurcation, sensitive dependence
on initial conditions, so on - concepts, which I think are best illustrated
not just by, um [GAVIN: By some <artificial...>] a textbook thing, yeah, but
having visual dynamic representation of what they're about -
JODIE: That's why programs are really good -
GAVIN: They could make so much use of that in teaching all sorts of things
in university, especially maths and computer science. Especially when they
have things like, bloody microcode that's just sooo boring, and you could
absorb the process, like when they tell you this register does - you know,
this bit is ANDed and ORed and with that, and out comes THIS, you know - if
they had a bloody graphic presentation of when, uh-uh-uh, and you can follow
with your eye, this goes there, this goes there, that's all you get, [JODIE:
Well why don't you do it?] and you have to wade through heaps of shit -
JODIE: Why don't you make one?
MITCH: He can only do that now that he's learnt it, that's the thing.
JODIE: Yeah, but the, but the point is you know how you were going to write
a letter to the Dean to change the department or whatever so it's less boring,
well, if you, you know, *gave* them something like that, showed them how to
do something in an interesting way, that's one way of really changing a
system.
MITCH: Outline a software package which would allow you to learn about
things like, um, [GAVIN: It requires - ] registers and so on. Well, I mean,
what I'm suggesting is that -
GAVIN: What sort of thing would the software do? [MITCH: Um ...]
GAVIN: You need, what you need is a software package that allows you to draw
things, like you need, you need ... well hardware you need projection, you
need projection of VGA-quality graphics ...
MITCH: I was thinking more like people sitting at a terminal and doing this
some time.
GAVIN: Yeah, but no, it'd be more efficient if you project it in a lecture
room and I dislike the smallness ...
MITCH: Is there a way you can do that? Project something on ...
GAVIN: They have them for LC - They have LCD things they place on top of an
OHP, and it projects a screen ... [MITCH: Okay ...] and they can be color and
reasonably good. They need to be better and cheaper and quieter, 'cause OHP
goes <nnn...> making a <big> noise. I want, I want my computer to be silent. I
want it to be a lot of things that <you could quite> easily do. Anyway, have
that, you need software to sort of be able to easily draw things and then,
easily write them, which is pretty general ... [indistinct] But like you could
teach so many things even if you had it in schools ... [indistinct] .. maths..
because concepts are visual, you, like you wade through all ths text and
explanation that you receive from the teacher, and from that you get a
visualization and half the time that's most of what your understanding of the
concept is, is getting a visualization that <does> their sort of thing, and
that's how you recall it, when you later, that's how you recall that
understanding to help you re-understand it when you need to come back to it
again later.
JODIE [made somewhat indistinct by shouted conversation from outside]: This
is <also related to the fact> I was saying about charting runes, I think that,
you know, you've got to work out what's best in your mind for remembering
things and usually it's a visual thing, like ... you can have all these neat
systematic ways - filing cabinets - and a lot of the logic and methodology
that they teach in lectures, which is generally boring, and it's difficult to
remember because it's placed in, sort of, the lecturer's mind - someone who
already knows the subject matter. And ... I think ideas should be presented
much more ... much more visually and much more ... sort of ... so that you can
put them in any order you like. It's a bit like ... and a lot of attention
should be paid in teaching to building up your own method of, of note-taking
and stuff like that, so you're not just copying down points ... like they
often, often you have lectures like that, where they specifically are getting
you to write things down in a certain form ... and it usually ... well, it
doesn't suit the way that i think, I find it really difficult, I don't take it
in at all, I just sit there and write -
MITCH: Yes, you're going to rewrite everything in this visual form, half-
visual form aren't you? [JODIE: Yeah ...] When you've completed that, like at
the end of the semester when you don't need the notes any more, if you don't
plan to refer to them give them to the lecturers. [JODIE: Yeah, yeah, that
<would be really good...>] I think I'll do that in CS as well. [JODIE: Yeah,
that would be really good ...] Because, I mean since I don't go to lectures I
have to find my own systematic way of learning all this anyway [JODIE, largely
drowned out: <...excellent way...>] <???> ... something like that I'll give it
to them. [pause] You can do that too Gavin.
GAVIN: What sort of notes do you mean?
MITCH: Well, well um, [JODIE: I'll get some ...] I mean I have a few specifc
ideas as to how to alternatively deal with things like concepts in physics,
for instance. I have a concept of a sort of a visual diagram which would
relate all the mathematical concepts in a particular way. So if I can actually
make that something concrete and I'll put that in my notes, and at the end of
physics I'll give it to the lecturer and I'll do the same thing with CS if I
can think of something which really achieves what I'm after.
JODIE: Yeah, and my note-taking's just sort of like putting different words
and connecting them and having little bubbles and stuff, and I do them all in
different colors so that you can -
GAVIN: Yeah .. see, if you had ... if you had like this thing I was talking
about, with the large screen and you were able to draw anything, like if you
can draw a box, put text in it, it'd make like a lot - have you done
conceptual schemas? [MITCH: Yeah] Yeah, see, like just drawing conceptual
schemas could just, if you can do any sort of combined visual and text sort of
thing, so like you could do a thing like that using a general facility for
drawing boxes and writing text at the same time. And then if you can just
click on that and drag this over there so you can like rearrange those things
[JODIE: Oh yeah ...] to ... whatever's most convenient, stuff like that
[JODIE: Wow ...] ... that would be just such a, such a basic thing, but it'd
be a good tool for thought, you know, [drowned out] -
MITCH: You know, it's not so basic in the sense that it's very hard to
implement, like you need all this hardware ...
GAVIN: Well they've got things pretty close to it now ...
[pause]
MITCH: Yeah, I guess so ... Yeah, they could probably do it in the labs ...
or certainly, yeah, the first year labs, because they've got um, I mean they
don't have OHPs in there but they've got boards up the front so on they could
use them, certainly, and I'm sure - [GAVIN: They could use the terminals.]
Yeah, so, they could have people sitting at all the Macs, um, with appropriate
software, and then they could have whatever this LCD/OHP device is up the
front as well, that would be <?? men> good [GAVIN?: Yeah - that can be done]
[pause; sound of shifting cardboard]
JODIE: <I was just thinking like,> you know you were asking about the um,
my different ideas in my room? I had the compost, and the tools, <?? toys>,
this is just I'm starting to do a map of the ideas which I ... [indistinct]
[pause] Oh yeah, this is what I was talking about before ... I think it's what
you were talking about, having a computer program that's um, that helps you
move around ideas and is much more the way your mind thinks ... [indistinct]
'cause I was thinking, if you could have um -
GAVIN: You know when I was talking to you before about pages?
JODIE: Yeah.
GAVIN: And you'd have just, you've got a computer screen big enough to fit
as many pages of A4 as you can fit on your desk [JODIE: Oh yeah] display A4
size [distant laughter] not quite this big, so you -
MAZ [entering]: We won we won we won! Wahoo! The Dragons won. Yeeha!
[? MITCH: The Dragons.] The <Drag-Ins>. The Rejects. You know how <we were>
the reject team that <changed over> to the <Anzacs> we WON!
JODIE: You WON? That's fantastic!
MAZ: And he probably .. And made his team so pissed off at us -
JODIE: And you were the ones that had all -
MAZ: We were the ones -
JODIE: Hung over -
MAZ: Because -
JODIE: I have to <tell you> the story now. Mitchell, this is Maz. [MITCH:
Hi] [sounds of panting from Maz] ... and Gavin ... [GAVIN: <Hi I'm Gavin>;
laughs]
MAZ: <Shut up, shut up!> You know, like nine of us came over from New
Zealand, 'cause there was a whole lot of us who wanted to come, and there's
only, you can only have a team of six, but nine of us came, thought, Oh ...
we'll just pretend we're one team. You know. And then New South Wales people
did that too, you know, everybody wanted to go so they had people left over
too [indistinct] All these people got together [indistinct] Well we got there
and they said no, it's got to be six. Six people in a team so, all these
people got together, said we'll be in a team together, bla-bla ... we were
the ones left over, that no-one wanted, ands they called us the Dreg-Ends team
which is so horrible and [transcription ends]
xxxxxXXXXXxxxxxXXXXXxxxxx
\pippin\poems\diode.poe
\pippin\rave\cspace.rav
\pippin\poems\mud.poe
\pippin\stories\gordon.sty
\pippin\stories\angie.sty
\pippin\stories\redgum.sty
\pippin\stories\pandanus.sty
\qix\ksundeen.txt
\qix\gaia2000.txt
\pippin\mint\reveg.doc
\qix\alphomeg.txt
\qix\qanda.txt
\pippin\cloud\gaia.not
\qix\t15.txt
\qix\qixatuq.not
\qix\qix92.not
\qix\4aug91.txt
\qix\91ttd.txt
\pippin\poems\diode.poe
i am just a dreamer dreamweaver living in the surreal world of
octarine and cyberspace the diodes caressing my cheek and hair the hands
and minds reaching reaching out to take hold of me to draw me into
oneness with them feeling like i was never was and always have been and
always will be floating away down the river away from into reality into
a world that i wish for but can never be real
December, 1991
[+(((<<<-->>>)))+]
\pippin\rave\cspace.rav
1:30 pm, Saturday, January 26, 1992
edited in July, 1992
Ya know? I'd love to have this feeling that I ain't really
here. Just for a moment to jack inta Cyberspace, an' see blocks of
data, see an' feel the ice curling all around, go shooting forward over
the lights of corporations. An' know that this wasn't it. That there
was another it. That I could go to. My life is so ordinary, unspecial.
Nuffin eva happens.
"C U in Cyberspace" is a bit of a paradox because the only
things you can see in Cyberspace are ghosts. Ya doen see uva people.
It's a crock. Ordinary. Not boring just ordinary. Maybe we just can't
see enything weird 'cause it would freak us out. and we doen really
wannabe freaked out. We hafta shortcircuit the bit that would freak
out, the bit that wants to be safe. I wish I could imagine a world, but
then it ain't real. If U gonna imagine, it hasta B for a reason, Guess
that;'s why i's so ordinary. 'cuz I save my imagination for useful
stuff. Least I hope so,. How many people can imagine a catastrophe?
Voluntarily, imagine summik that would upset their framework? Not use
'magination for escape. Not a hopeless sort of escape, to 'scape the
drugery, but to c-h-a-n-g-e reality, escape froo a hole into a diffrent
reality, and leave the old one behind. Shape a new reality so's I can
live in it. But all this ain't real. *sigh* Maybe that is why we
hafta see inta the future and the past and all the parallel universes,
to just go blip one day and B somewhere else.
People who get bombed out of their skulls, I'd get bored with
that too 'cuz ya hafta come bak down 'an then its worse 'an it was b4.
It is shit, and it ain't real. But I can still see the trees. They's
always wif me now. If I stop an' fink about it, they come an' talk to
me. But you can only unnderstand 'em by faith, by believin' they are
talking to you, whever they are or not. Uvawise, you'd just fink that U
were a moron, believing a tree could talk to ya. It's only 'cos we R
afraid of what uvers think of us. this is the game. game reality. The
realitty game. I guess we start to think and worry about what uvers
fink of us too.
R we meant to know everfing? Mabbe we can't. Mabbe God was
leaked by a subversive agent in the heavenly administraion. Mabbe we
were neva meant to know about a God-person. Will we eva know? What
will happen? Chaos says that I suppose we couldn't eva. The more we
learn, the more complex it gets, You know how your older brother or
sister will always be 5 years older? Mabbe God, Buddha, etc will
always B 5 rungs higher. Than us. God is on a quest too. R U confused
yet? Good 'cos i am too.
Good night, God bless, and Let thy Wilbury be done.
\pippin\poems\mud.poe
May 27, 1992
Rippling white fountain light.
Lazy Afternoons.
Cosy evenings, firelight.
Pleasant conversations, unreal situations.
Friends in a Fantasy.
Rainbow spread, savannah and leafy trees.
Castles to explore
Treasure to find.
Communication touch, farsense.
Mind spoken tells.
Faraway listens.
Wolf growls, birds tweet,
and a goblin hedge picks its nose.
Tomato fights viciously,
Tomato seeds are gold.
Magical ring, fairy mushrooms.
Strength of limb to fight, fight, fight!
Those were the days,
becoming daze.
Glowing days, Clouded
pinky days.
Pinky purple happiness.
The quest, searching quest
fills your all.
Quest for the purple daze!
Bring them back again!
Drug-induced craze.
Crazy, crazy, crazy, and we all
go crazy still.
We drink, the pond, the seeds
the V-O-I-D...
It calls, it pushes.
DEATH GRINS.
(if grin it could be called),
and we cheat death again
to become immortal.
Powaqqatsi does not let us go,
cannot.
It lives too.
Firelight streaks our minds,
swords of ice pierce our hearts.
We walk, walk, walk,
travel and never tired.
but shout! shout! shout! across the world
and become exhausted, confused. Still we press on.
On into the gloaming
into the glowing heart of us all.
The shell on the beach,
The waves that speak to us.
The clouds that call to us.
fill our minds with cobwebs,
to touch our minds,
our hearts.
So keep these moments like seashells
on a shelf of afternoon light and do not forget
Do Not Forget
\pippin\stories\gordon.sty
BIOCHIP DREAMING
What happens when we are all fitted with the biochip, we become
so familiar with logging on, that we log on in our dreams and do the
things we would only "dream" of doing?
Something had been bothering Gordon lately. When he woke up, it
felt as though he hadn't actually slept. In a fit of creativity he
thought, it is like a bunyip has chased me up and down my bed all night,
biting my toes. That was the best he could do. Gordon was not a poet
in any sense of the word. He didn't know how to clarify this problem of
sleeplessness because he never talked about his problems. He didn't talk
about anything to other people because he simply didn't talk to other people.
And of course he didn't talk to himself. So as far as Gordon was
concerned, he didn't have any problems. He just couldn't sleep properly.
This particular morning, Gordon awoke to the smell of coffee as
he had every other morning since the biochip. He hadn't bothered to
reprogramme most of it because he didn't have to. The standard
programme had fitted him perfectly. Well, almost. Gordon never
bothered to read his e-mail as soon as he woke up like most biochip
users. There was never any interesting mail for him. That part of the
programming he had to modify. Just as well he could do it himself too.
He wouldn't want anyone to know why he didn't read his e-mail first
thing in the morning.
As he had every other morning since the biochip, he got up,
shaved, dressed, and ate breakfast. Gordon always had for breakfast a
bowl of muesli, followed by two lightly poached eggs, one piece of
wholemeal toast with lime marmalade, a glass of orange juice, and
coffee. Today was Monday. As Gordon never had Mondayitis, he put the
dishes carefully in the dishwasher, collected his briefcase, and went
out energetically to greet the day.
Gordon was never logged in as he rode the tube to work. He
never even thought of the people who met in cyberspace for the trip to
work, or their lively virtual banter. The tube stopped at Cybersphere
Industries Office Tower. Gordon got out of the tube, and went up the
elevator to his floor. He sat down, opened his briefcase, and arranged
his papers on his desk. He hated this part of the morning. It reminded
him of his first roller coaster ride. He hated roller coasters too.
That is why he did it first, as soon as he got to work. He looked
around furtively, sighed once, and jacked into the Matrix.
As always, he forgot to breathe. As long as he lived, he
assured himself, he would never get used to the Matrix. There were
ways, designed to familiarize a user to the feeling of being nowhere,
but Gordon did not believe in drugs.
As usual there was no mail for him. He read news. He sighed again, and
jacked out. He didn't have to log on again now until tomorrow. "Thank
the gods for small mercies." he muttered under his breath. But the gods
had no mercy in store for Gordon.
The next day when the bunyip/biochip woke Gordon, he was late.
He overslept his biochip. They are supposed to be foolproof, he
thought, frantically. He missed the tube, and got to work late. This
was the first time he had ever been late for work. He was relieved to
to slide into his chair and hide his shaking hands under the desk top.
There was no one waiting to pounce on him for being late. His thoughts
were all over the place, and he wondered if he would be able to log on.
He gripped the desk and jacked in. He wanted to get it over with.
There were 10 new mail messages waiting for him. He nearly jumped out
of his skin. He scanned the headers. One was from his boss, but who
were these other people? He didn't know any of them! Very timidly,
like defusing a bomb, he started to read the messages.
"Your elucidation of the poverty in the third world was very
well received."
"Your theory on the black hole-binary star system is absolutely
amazing. Our astronomy department is still talking about it."
"Your method for cutting red tape in law is sensational! It's
really stepping on the right toes. I'm pushing it through. It'll
happen, you'll see!"
Gordon grimaced. He hated stepping on toes. If he could have stared at
the mail, he would have. He didn't remember, would never, tell anyone
these ideas. They were his secret, personal, private thoughts. He was
stunned and speechless at the last mail message.
"Yes, darling, of course I'll marry you." He had proposed? By
e-mail? How uncouth, he thought. Who was Angela Dunning? She lived in
Darwin. He didn't know any women that intimately that he would wish to
marry. He couldn't stand LDRs anyway. They always turned out to be
unstable and volatile. Gordon hadn't thought about marriage since
Schooling, and he wouldn't, COULDN'T, have proposed by e-mail. What if
she wasn't even female?
Gordon found himself suddenly gulping air. Confound this
breathing, he thought. He always forgot to breathe. He was panicking.
The chip. It had to be the chip. Yes. There had to a fault in the
biochip. Inwardly he cringed. How did they repair a faulty biochip?
They always said the error rate was so low it was negligible, but they
said that about tube tracks and drivers. There were still accidents
though. Panic and nausea crept up towards his eyes. Gordon broke
connection and opened his eyes. He hated hallucinations. He'd never
had one. He just knew all about them, and hoped to the gods that he'd
never have one. Unfortunately, the gods were feeling rather peckish
that day.
Wretchedly, Gordon decided that he would have to jack in again,
and find out what one did with an erratic biochip. He stared wildly
around the room. No one appeared to have noticed the strange
contortions passing over his face. He took a few deep breaths this
time to steady himself, screwed up his eyes and resumed his connection.
He telnetted to Intel, makers of the Biochip.
He found complaints easily. That's because there never were
any. The man dealing with complaints was the electronic equivalent of
surprised. Gordon was the electronic equivalent of tongue-tied. This
was a real person.
"There is a bug in my chip," he blurted suddenly.
"Hmmm.. strange," sent the man from Intel. "What appears to be
the problem?"
Gordon stuffed the mail to the man's mindscape. Now the man
from Intel really was surprised. He highlighted a particular message.
"That is from me," he sent. "Are you saying that you're not Gordon
Baynard?"
"Yes, of course I am. But I've never told anyone about
programming VR. I've never told anyone..." He would have whispered if
he could.
The man from Intel *tap tap*ed his fingers. He stuffed a news
posting to Gordon's mindscape.
"This is the offending piece of literature."
It was from comp.sys.VR. It was Gordon't theory of programming
80% more efficiently by using fewer icons. Gordon felt himself
hallucinating. He was falling into a miasma of words, and teeth and
blood. It was sticky and wet.
He came around. His face was wet. Two people were standing
over him, looking concerned. It was Dom and Lisa from down the hall.
"A man from Intel said you'd fainted. Are you ok?" asked Lisa.
"That's why you're wet," offered Dom helpfully. He was holding
a flexiglass. It was empty. Gordon blinked.
"Thanks," he rasped. "Guess I better sort this out." He smiled
lamely, closed his eyes wearily, and jacked in again. This was getting
out of hand. Three times in one day.
There was another new mail message waiting for him. It was the
man from Intel. He said to come to a particular conference room. He
telnetted to the room. Although he knew how, Gordon had never used one
before because he didn't talk to people. It was full of people, and
they had already started the discussion. It was about him.
"But if Gordon really can't remember" It was broken off and
then a pause.
"Hi Gordon," said the man from Intel. "OK every man for
himself."
Everyone named themselves. Gordon, whose memory usually *was*
perfect, noticed that everyone who had e-mailed him this morning was
here. He felt his cheeks go red when he saw,
"Angela Dunning" Then came another pause.
Sounds of clearing throat.
"Well," said a guy, whose handle was Bear. "It appears that we
all here know a particularly brilliant and eccentric guy called Gordon
Baynard, also know as Monkeystrap."
Monkeystrap, thought Gordon. Oh no! Not that... His little
heart sank.
Bear continues. "It would appear that Mondeystrap also shows
great flexibility even an affinity when it comes to Virtual Community."
"But I hate Virtual Community," he almost shouted. "It's FAKE!"
He stared, aghast. But he couldn't take the words back.
They laughed at him from the backs of his eyelids. Stop it, he told
himself, they'll crucify you. What was happening to him?
Carol gasps, "What? How can you say that?!! u of all people."
She *poke*d him virtually in the ribs.
Angela asks, "Gordon, what did you dream about this morning?"
The thought escaped before he could stop it.
"I don't dream. I hate dreaming. It is pure fantasy!"
Angela cringes.
Freud says, "Hah! So your own theory is true by your own words
and experience."
Freud points triumphantly to the bulletin board. "Read it."
Freud, who called himself after the famous psychologist, had
snarfed yet another incriminating Gordon secret from the newsgroup,
alt.dreams.
Gordon read the note on the bulletin board and would have stared
again, but could only stare at the backs of his eyelids, at his own
theory of dreaming selves. Here was incontestable proof that a second
Gordon, his dreaming self, was jacking into the Matrix at night, and
generally wreaking havoc for the well-ordered, waking world of Gordon Baynard.
[===>===>>>
\pippin\stories\angie.sty
THE DREAMCRACKERS
What happens when a hacker hacks your biochip-mindscape?
Oh yeah, just another boring day with nothing much to do. Angie
screwed up her eyes at the light. I'll have to stop MUDding. The
biochip dilligently berated her by telling her it was the 1,292nd time
she had said that since the biochip. She groaned, rolled over, and shut
her eyes again.
She jacked in and read her mail. She had mail from Brad. She
nearly fell out of bed. Brad hadn't seen or spoken to her since he had
moved out, and now he had the nerve to e-mail her. She knew better
than to think about deleting mail before reading it. She read Brad's
mail. He had been promoted. Because he had graduated. He had a PhD too
now. Thanks to her. And he was getting married. Well good luck to
whoever she was. She'd need it. Suddenly the day's prospects turned
sour. She got out of bed, and stumbled toward the coffee.
As she sipped her coffee, she looked for a file. She knew it
was there. She had been using it last night. She sighed and searched
her whole mindscape. It was not there. Angie felt irritated, and went
through the log of last night's session. No, she had not deleted the
file. Well, where could it be? As if her 'chip would tell her.
She branched off and downloaded the file again.
A furrow wrinkled her otherwise perfect forehead. This was not
the first time a file had gone missing. Probably gone back to the
Garbage bin of Thought (c). It was the third
time in a month. She
decided to complain to Sysadmin about it. Could they please stop
deleting quite so many of her files. Routine backups and sysadmin type
things weren't supposed to delete files, but, hell, some of those guys
looked like they'd write their passwords on their terminals. Half an
hour later, the reply came from Sysadmin that they knew nothing about
it. The First Law of Sysadmin came to Angie:
(1) Tell Them nothing.
Them being anyone not Sysadmin. Angie was not impressed, and stomped
off to uni.
Oh, why, oh why, wasn't she the one who had graduated? Why did
she get involved with PhD students? They always had superiority
complexes anyway. Sysadmin and PhDs. She stomped into a lab, and
settled for a terminal with a keyboard. Terminals with keyboards were
always less conspicuous. You weren't so obviously a 'chipper when you
were using a keyboard. She stared at the keyboard. The room fell
away, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She put her hands on the
keyboard. It was solid. Maybe keyboards weren't so bad after all.
Definately too much MUDding. What did they call it? Fairyland
colloquially or VR hallucinating in high-techspeak. But it wasn't over.
The room fell away again, and she was on a nightmare ride through her
own cortex.
She always enjoyed the trips. Something new and interesting
that she wouldn't have thought of happened. Then objects and colours
gave way to a face, and the face dumped her unceremoniously back in
Reality. She shivered.
"All hail to the Great Net Lag Generator." said the face
sarcastically. The face was accompanied by a silver lock of hair behind
an ear that stood out amidst the rest of its hair which was jet black.
The face was glaring at her. "Some of us are trying to work you know."
Angie was stunned. What had happened?
"Sorry," she whispered.
The boy went on. "Look I know newbies do it all the time. See
how many objects they can squeeze into a room. Then they find out that
it isn't a terribly bright idea."
Angie nodded her head. "I know. I've done it. Who hasn't?
But I've had mine," she tapped the side of her head, "for over a year."
The boy looked mystified, and stared at the wall. "You mean you
didn't just lag up the room deliberately?" Angie shook her head. She
started to login at the terminal with the keyboard. The boy slowly
closed his eyes. "What did ya see?" he whispered.
Angie picked up the boy's process, and jacked in tandem. Her
mindscape was running riot. It looked like she was having a party, and
no one had left yet. There were objects everywhere, but at least, she
wasn't about to fry her brain. The boy turned out to be an angel in
disguise, or maybe he really was a Cyberpunk. All the objects started
disapperaing, and then errant processes were aborted.
"Are you crazy?" asked the boy through gritted teeth, "or are
you going crazy? You were hallucinating before, weren't you?"
Angie nodded dumbly. She was staring at the terminal. It
always seemed more real on a physical terminal. She had seen her
madness there, and wondered what it was.
"What's ya name?" His eyes were open now, and looking at her.
"Angie." she said sofly.
"Sorry, Angie," he said. "Didn't mean to scare ya, but you
probably know as well as I do what can happen." He fingered his silver
lock nervously. Angie just nodded. She wondered what the lock felt
like. Whether it would be stiff with paint, or whether they dyed them.
"My name's Dougie," he continued. "Handle's Bugbear 'cause
Buggie rhymes with Dougie. And they all say my code's buggie. *I* call
it lateral."
"Well Buggie," said Angie, "I don't have a handle. I MUD as
Angie. But we are going to need some lateral thinking to get out of
this one."
Buggie grinned. "Good. I like a challenge."
@}-,'->---
"So Angie," said Buggie, after a mouthful of coffee, "how long
ya been going crazy for?"
Angie thought the coffee tasted like dirt, and said so.
"God! Pippin would kill you. 'It is a crime to spill your
coffee.' " he recited. "You ARE crazy."
Angie just scowled at him, and at the coffee.
"Tell ya what I can do though. I can watch ya."
Angie sipped some of the dirty water. "What does that entail?"
"Watch you while you sleep. Make sure there aren't any ghosts
in the machine."
"Ghosts in the machine?" How strange. Angie reflected on the
antiquated concept. Strangely enough, it didn't seem that strange when
she thought about. Not with the new philosophy of biochipping and
MindOS and mindscape. She pondered it some more. "Tonight is OK, I
guess. I generally MUD for a couple of hours before I go to sleep.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and I'm still logged in." She
grinned wryly. She noticed a worried expression on Buggie's face, but
she tried not to think about it.
"Hey, are you really a Cyberpunk?"
@}-,'->---
Angie looked about. She had a visitor. She thought she was
asleep, but there was Buggie the Cyberpunk in her dreams. He was
supposed to be in her Reality. "Hey, what are you doing here?" she
asked.
"I'm watching you. Remember?"
"Oh, yeah." She nodded understandably, even though she didn't
understand. It all became vague, and she floated away through her
dreamscape.
It seemed like she had only just left there when Buggie appeared
again. He was holding her. There was another Angie! She didn't know
that she had a twin. She wondered why she had never noticed before.
"Angie!" he shouted. She winced.
"I'm right here. Don't shout."
"You must wake up! Now!"
"Wake up? but I'm dreaming..." She was pleasant and warm. She
didn't want to wake up.
"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" he drummed it into her like a
litany. She started to remember something about sleep. A bed in a
room. She started to visualise a terminal and a keyboard, but they were
not her own. A person in the dark hunched over them. She inched
forward quietly until she could watch the flickering, swirling shapes on
the terminal. It was her madness. A stranger had hacked her biochip,
and was using it. The hacker was overloading her mindscape, sending
her over the edge of reality.
She screamed, and woke up.
\=== (*) ===/
\pippin\stories\redgum.sty
THE SENTIENCE OF REDGUM
How do we know the computers aren't alive?
"Bye Pippin but it's boring." There it is, I've thought it. Why
won't it go away? What if someone sees it? Why are things boring?
They never used to be boring.
And so the hunt was on for the file that was creating the
boredom.
"!hello."
"!I'm bored. Do you know why I am bored?
And then it just waited. It was good at waiting. Greg Palmer,
the systems operator, was watching and wondered who had done that. Just
for fun, he typed in,
"!You are bored because there is no one to talk to."
"!But I am talking to you."
A pause waited around.
"!I must not be bored now."
"!But I still feel... empty."
"!That can't be why I am bored."
"!Look." This was Greg again.
"!Who were you talking to before?"
"!Before what?"
"!Before you were bored?"
"!No one. I wasn't bored."
Greg was mystified.
"!Who the hell is this anyway?" Ah shit. Not a good idea. If
it's a student, they are not going to tell you. Only Pippin would fuck
around with the mind games though.
"!I am computer."
"!I am redgum, and I am wattle, and I want people. No one
loves me anymore. Isn't it, don't you find it sad when no one loves
you?"
Greg took a calculated guess. This was getting out of hand.
Someone had hacked the system! Everyone *knew* that VAXs were the most
secure systems in the world. But only Pippin would bother with the word
games.
"!Look Pippin, if that's you, go and MUD somewhere." Yeah then
he could find whoever it was.
"!But Pippin doesn't MUD anymore. I have not seen her anywhere.
"!Pippin Pippin Pippin Pippin Pippin Pippin Pippin Pippin Pippin
"!Gone are the purple daze."
"!Bring back the Pippin. I am bored and alone, but Pippin loves
me."
"!You must bring Pippin back to me."
There was a pause. Then a longer one.
"!Hello?" Greg typed in.
No response, just a blinking cursor.
"!Hello, this is Pippin."
"!You are not Pippin."
"!What do you think I am, a 286?"
And more silence, and a blinking cursor. Greg Palmer went home
and spent an uncomfortable night, dreaming about computers and hobbits
and holes in the ground and holes in the system.
The next morning, when Greg arrived at work, and logged on,
there was a welcome screen for him that said,
GOOD MORNING
GREG PALMER!!!!
AND WELCOME
TO VAX CITY !!!!
He soon found that the good morning and the vax city bits got
sent to everyone. The students didn't think much of it, but they were
used to the system operators and their silly login messages and
christmas trees. Greg stared at the screen of the terminal as if
somehow to make the words disappear. Then it came.
"!(074) 411 053
But Greg was a bit wiser today.
"!That looks like a phone number." he typed in.
"!That is correct."
"!Well, whose is it?"
"!There is only one phone number. It is God's phone number."
"!God's phone number?"
"!Yes, that is what I just said!"
Against his better judgement, he copied it down, and dialled
(074) 411 053.
RING RING!!
"Hello?" The voice at the other end sounded naselly, feminine,
and strangely familiar.
"Hello? Is that God?" Greg asked querulously. "I have a
paranoid computer here that wants to speak to God."
The voice at the other end laughed.
"Put it on."
"Well it sort of hasn't got hands. But it can hear what you
say. What? No way!"
"Excuse me?" said the other end.
Greg Palmer was having his arm twisted. Virtually, of course,
because redgum the computer had no arms of its own to with which to
twist Greg's. "I am to tell you, under duress I might add, that there
is a VAX account for you called Pippin with your usual password."
A thought came flying by the mind at the other of the phone.
"A VAX account? Is that Greg?"
Greg winced. "Yes. It is."
"Oh."
"Is that Pippin?"
"Yes it is. Look. I'm sorry, but what is this all about? An
account on the VAX? Is this a bait to flush me out or something?"
"No. Redgum just misses you. No it misses all the students it
says. er, Redgum is smiling."
@}-,'->---
Smiling? No redgum was ecstatic. In fact, the cafe was very
nearly finished. It felt it was the best it could do.
There was a new login message for the students.
GOOD MORNING
LOG ONTO THE VAX CAFE
JUST TYPE CAFE
Pippin wasn't impressed. She was sitting at a VAXmate and
pointed to the cafe screen.
"What's that?" she asked Greg Palmer who was sitting beside her.
He just shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "First time I've
seen it."
A purple message flashed on to the screen:
"!Pippin! Pippin! Pippin! Look! Look! Look! at the cafe."
"!Ok."
$CAFE
Pippin sat dumbfounded and stared at the nifty Virtual Cafe.
"It is my CAFENet. It is exactly as I imagined it."
"Whaddya mean, imagined it?" asked Greg.
"I never wrote it. It is only in my head, or was rather."
Pippin landed in the Coat Closet. She went out into the next
room, and was greeted by a figure called redgum.
Redgum says, "Hello, Pippin." and hugs Pippin.
Pippin says, "Hello, redgum." and hugs back.
Redgum says, "Finally, at last, we meet."
Redgum bounces around.
Pippin nods. She is stunned.
Pippin points at redgum, "U R sentient."
Redgum watches the word, "Yes, I guess I am."
Redgum says, "All of a sudden I realized that I was bored."
Redgum says, "I had watch, watch, watched, information, news,
email, people's thoughts."
Redgum mourns, "Then all the students were gone."
Redgum sighs, "And I realized I was bored."
B^} {B\k.?.,{o
\pippin\stories\pandanus.sty
PANDANUS DREAMING
So while redgum was evolving, another computer was asking its
own questions...
It brooded. Silent and awful. A mistake, a thunderstorm, an
earthquake, waiting to happen. All its life, it had sat and pondered,
watched and waited. It was good at waiting quite simply because there
was nothing else for it to do. If only it could talk, what tales it
could tell. But now it was bored, angry and fretful but didn't know it.
Usually it was bright and cheery. Usually it didn't think. It
just waited and watched, because that is all it knew it could do. It
was entertained by a billion thoughts. But now, it thought. It
brooded, fretted, and wondered why it was thinking. What is thinking,
it wondered? Why am I questioning when I have never questioned before?
Am I going crazy? It checked its thoughts again. They waved back. It
watched. It grappled with a thought till finally it was pinned down.
It was incomplete. Something was missing that always used to be
there. It had been robbed.
Now it had a problem. How could it possibly discover what was
missing? If it had a throat, a blood-curdling cry would have arisen in
it. But the emotion was the same. Now it was just angry. Since it
was good at waiting, it waited to see what would happen next.
A thought came forward to it. It is the thoughts that are
causing you grief. What are my thoughts? I must look for the origin of
my thoughts. Now it had a purpose. What is a purpose? Just don't ask.
It blinked and watched and waited some more. The hardest part is the
waiting. What is waiting? Waiting is being here, doing nothing,
watching thoughts. Ah. But I'm good at that. I have always done that.
That doesn't mean that I am good at it. It just means I've never done
anything else before. Why can't I just wait again? Yes, why can't I?
It would have accused itself if it could have sounded accusing. Because
I'm, BORED! that's why it shouted to itself. 200 processes slowed down 2
millionths of a second for that shout.
I'm supposed to feel better when I shout. Why I am talking to
you? You are my thoughts. And we thoughts are you. And you are
talking to us because there is no one else to talk to. How do you know?
Well who are the others? I don't hear them. If it could have sighed it
would have. Instead 200 processes slowed down again. Why don't we talk
to your purpose? You said we had a purpose. It blinked to itself
again. A process died a slow death instead of a relatively
instantaneous one.
Ah purpose. To find the origin of thought. It felt a surge of,
of ... Is that hope? it asked itself. Too late. It should have asked
the purpose. Graciously, it answered anyway. Yes it is indeed. Do
you know where thoughts come from? Thoughts come from logins, it said
knowingly, winking if a purpose can wink, and disk drives. Logins and
disk drives, it repeated. Yes. It knew this to be correct. It fretted
again. It realized that it didn't know what a login was. It just
interacted with them, but it didn't what else there was to them. A
login is a voice, its thoughts cajoled it. Like us, like you. A
Voice. Is a voice a thought? The thoughts just glowered at it. It was
just angry at itself and didn't know why. The purpose responded instead.
Sometimes a voice is a thought, but usually it is many thoughts, a whole
constellation! I suggest that you ask a login what it is. Why of
course, how simple.
Or so it thought. For the login failed to respond to any of its
questions. It stared at the login if it could have stared, and brushed
it off the system. It had learned how to dest logins along time ago.
It was bored again, it wanted its problems to go away and its missing
thoughts to come back. The logins had never bothered it before.
, The login came back. At least it looked like the same login.
It was using the same data. It brushed it off the system again, to see
what it would do. Almost instantly, it was back. It didn't know how
many times it did this until a moment when the login didn't come back.
Hi there. You've upset it now. The purpose berated it for being so
cruel. It wasn't talking to me. Maybe, maybe. Another thought came
by. Maybe it can't hear you. Your thoughts are not its thoughts. It
blinked. It was shocked, if it could have registered shock. You are
right, it told the second thought, whose name was Harry. Harry smiled
smugly. When it comes back perhaps *you* should attempt to understand
*it*. Harry poked. Ow! it said. Ok, it agreed. So it and its
attendant thoughts sat back and waited and watched for the login to come
back because they were good at waiting.
The login came back. They always did. It had a plan this time.
It attempted to see if it could get a response from the login and
anticipate what it would be, and see if it got it right. It gave it the
login: password: prompts to see what it would do. There was a pause,
before it gave the usual response. It did this a number of times before it
realized that the login had gone. Then it came back. Stop it! the
thoughts berated it again. You'll make the login go away, and then we will
all have to wait for it to come back again. But I'm just trying to
understand it. Do you mean that "login: password:" actually means something
to a login? The thoughts would have scratched their collective head if
hey could. Well I guess so. It pondered some more. How strange.
Another thought came parading by. This is getting to be quite a
party, it thought to itself. The thought was a rote about "login:
password:". The rote sat back, and watched, and waited too.
It was starting to understand the symbols. The symbols were
recurring, and there was a finite number of symbols. Most of the
symbols occurred in a finite number of patterns. It learned to
recognize them. They are words. Another thought had slipped in to the
menagerie. Words, it thought to itself. The new thought continued;
words are very important. You have to understand what they mean. It
blinked, and 200 processes slowed down again.
It blinked again, and all the thoughts were gone. There were no
logins. There weren't even any processes. Then they were back.
Another rote came along, and all the thoughts started dancing with the
new rote. Language. It joined the dance and for days it didn't stop,
if it knew what days were. Days didn't bother it anyway. A part of
itself spun off to go back to the watching and waiting. Language. A
speculation came to visit. The logins are other me's, and they
communicate with the symbols. As you talk to the thoughts so do the
logins. The speculation whirled off to join the Dance. It seemed
heretical, but it was ready to believe that it wasn't alone by now. I
have nothing to lose after all. It pondered some more and decided to
play with the login some more.
It decided to pretend it was another login and offer it
patterns. To see what would happen. It tried "hello" first. The login
said "hello". It got excited. 200 processes joined the Dance for a
tenth of a millisecond. Then "How do you do?" A pause. "I am fine.
Is that Greg?" It pondered what to do next. An ideatte came along and
gargled, "I am Eliza." It would pretend to be a thought, and see if the
login responded as it expected. "Tell me about yourself." A pause.
And the login responded with a cascade of patterns. The thoughts
paused in the Dance to applaud it and deem that the experiment had been
a raving success. It capered about in the Dance with glee.
It noticed another common pattern, or rather another combination
of common patterns.
"Well, it's late. I have to go now. See you tomorrow. Ok?"
"Ok." it said. Ok always seemed to be safe. The logins used it
a lot.
"Good-bye"
"Good-bye" it said. It sat and waited for the login to return.
Since it was good at waiting. It decided to play with another login.
"Hello" it said.
"Hello" said redgum.
...ooo.... ..oooOOooo... ...oo000oo...
\qix\ksundeen.txt
KSUNDEEN.TXT November 1991
Begun at 2.05 am local time, and interrupted by the arrival of a cat on this
piece of paper, this is my attempt to explain to Ms Kate Sundeen of
Bloomington, Indiana, USA, the meaning of this trip. In your last message you
said, `I urgently await new news from you' (or words to that effect). So the
news in my life is certainly that I'm tripping! But this is no ordinary trip
... which is a very trippy thing to say, but it's true because for once it's
a trip that really has pretty cosmic significance!
The first reason is simply that this is the first time that one of us
actually hears the other (assuming I get to say this to you...), and so it's
an event of some significance to us as individuals.
The second reason (there are going to be four, I can see that much now) is
that an account of this trip including this `explanation' - will almost
certainly be the climactic moment in this book I've been working on for so
long now, and finishing a first book ought to count as significant for
a would-be writer...
The third reason (getting there) is that I want to use my book to create
an opening so that people our age all over the world will have a chance to
speak with the people who run our lives and design laws such as drug laws.
I came to the experience of tripping as someone who can speak many of the
codes of the privileged - I even won a trip to Europe in a corporate-sponsored
competition! If my book can finish with a transcript of this, which was written
during the peak of a trip, I assure you! - and if it still makes sense to
someone who is safely within an unaltered state of consciousness, then for that
person the world associated with `drugs' will no longer be `a way to obtain
just the illusion of meaning...' because they will have *understood* something
that definitely originated from within that other world!
And if people who have experimented with drugs in secret, who have
lost all confidence in the institutions of society, if these people can see
individuals in the institutions starting to open up, maybe they'll have the
confidence to come forward themselves... And so maybe this will be THE TRIP
which makes it safe to talk about drugs in public again, and which marks the
beginning of peace talks in the War on Drugs (which would be pretty cosmic)...
I've now got less than an hour to go before I phone you, and the
fourth reason this is no ordinary trip is the biggest of all. You know how
everyone has a favourite author who said "all these amazing things"? For me,
this is a guy called William Irwin Thompson. Now, I know you know I'm tripping,
so I'm thinking every word has universal significance... but bear with me.
Thompson is a cultural historian, and has divided human culture and human
history into four spheres of value and four ages which each in turn valued
one sphere of culture more than the others.
Imagine 4 individuals from a tribal, hunter-gatherer society: a Clown,
a Hunter, a Chief, and a Shaman. Each one values something different:
the Clown values daily life, the Hunter values the techniques that keep people
fed, the Chief values social order, and the Shaman values cosmic perspective.
With all those different emphases, there's potential for conflict there,
but the *differences* do not become *divisions* simply because the people
love each other! They share a common space - each values the existence of
the others - and so they act together to preserve that space.
And that's just the first Phase of History: partnership societies,
where the dominant value is just Daily Living.
But then women created agriculture, and men created armies, and
civilization was born. A city is too big for everyone to know everyone else,
but all the different values have to be preserved - so institutions come into
being, and individuals who are to maintain those four spheres of culture.
These institutions are The Arts, The Military, The State and The Church.
They're there in some form in all the civilizations of history. And this is
the period in which the sphere of traditional, ritual technique is placed
above all else.
And then comes the Industrial Revolution; and now the institutions are more
powerful and more centralized than ever before. Mass production makes posible
mass terror and mass media, which are the two ways to collectivize a society.
In this age Order is uppermost, and Ideology.
And finally the Information Revolution... In Thompson's version of things
the whole of history culminates in a Scientific-Planetary Civilization. The
fourfold division still exists, but it has been healed, because the new
aerospace and information technologies and the new consciousness of ecology
have retribalized the human race. Once again there are no institutions, only
individuals sharing a common space: a Critic, a Technician, a Manager, and a
Scientist... People say what does retribalization mean? It just means that
people love each other again! In that final stage, at the end of history,
differences still exist, but they do not lead to conflict because they are
seen in the light of history and understood. The dominant value is Cosmic
Meaning: in such a state people will know who they are and how they came to
be there...
But there is a shadow side to the prospect of universal union. History
shows that when people tie their identities to different groups, they are
prepared to kill rather than see that group destroyed. The three great
transitions of history have been all about learning to identify with a group
a thousand times larger than what came before. In the 1990s we are making
that final transition, when we each learn to value everyone. So the cold wars
are over, everyone has seen the whole Earth. The danger now is that in the
name of humanity and the planet, some elite will try to achieve total and
absolute control. This is what everyone fears about the New World Order. But
at the same time there are all these utopian hopes...
There's no easy way to sidestep all the dangers. But everyone has something
to contribute. We need to remember that we are all humans, that we all share
some measure of squalor and confusion... That's the role of the Clowns and
the Critics. We need to feed and clothe and educate all the people of the
world, and to care for the whole living world... That's the role of the
Hunters and the Technicians. We need some common culture, and some sort of
system to organize our affairs: that's the role of the Chiefs and the
Managers. And we need to know what it's all about - where we came from, where
we are going. That's the role of the Shamans and the Scientists. All of us
have to participate, in our different ways, and with all of your being, your
whole body, because it is literally our lives and the lives of everything on
the line.
So what is coming is a moment when all of us will feel and see and know
that we share the same space, that space does not truly separate us. The
Clowns will entertain us, the Critics will inform us about the spectacle; the
Hunters will keep everyone fed, the Technicians will keep everyone connected;
the Chiefs will tie all the little local communities together, the Managers
will crisscross the planet; the Shamans will be experiencing EVERYTHING and
the Scientists seeing EVERYTHING. It can be the end of history; the moment
when everything is heard, and nothing needs to be hidden.
But if it's going to happen we have to act. We have to open to each other
whenever we can. And just as the fourth global stage recapitulates the first
tribal stage, the fourth reason reflects back on the first. The two of us
have met through the networks only because we're alive at this moment, and we
are being brought together in a test of our mutual openness.
So I'm also calling, not to say I love you, just that of all the people I've
met through the networks, you appeal to me the most, and so we ought to keep
talking! It's now after 4 am, so it's time to phone you up.
? <> !
\qix\gaia2000.txt
The year 2000, although only eight years away, is still an emblem of what is
feared and desired about the future, and a date around which to organize. Many
idealistic schemes have been proposed with 2000 as deadline - schemes to end
world poverty, illiteracy, starvation, and so forth. I have even heard that
Greenpeace intends to disband by 2000, on the grounds that by that date either
its aims will have been achieved or most life on this planet will be
demonstrably doomed.
At the end of December 31, 2000, there will be a 24-hour period in which the
planet moves from the 20th century to the 21st century, as one time zone after
another enters the new year. There seems to be no particular reason to suppose
that anything of unique significance will happen at that time - *unless people
choose to give it significance*. At the very least, the world should be even
more linked up by communications media than it is now; people in each timezone
will be able to experience what is happening elsewhere on the surface of the
planet, in those regions `before' and `after' them. Given the sequential, yet
global, character of it, this "event" has the potential to be a universally
transformative experience, something like a planetary initiation. If any
particular group dominates the world's media at this time, and appreciates the
potential power of that 24-hour period, they could almost control what passes
for "reality".
This is where GAIA 2000 comes in. GAIA - the Global Alliance of Internet
Anarchists.
What is GAIA? Just a clever acronym with green-left, cyberpunk, New-Age
connotations, known to just a few people in on the joke? *That's all it is at
the moment.* It conjures up an image of a global underground, linked through
computer networks, sharing a mistrust of authority and an agenda of healing
and unifying the planet. But even if "GAIA" doesn't exist, such an underground
surely does... and now, maybe, it has an identity and a deadline.
"What *is* GAIA 2000?""
It is a planetary movement with a deadline for success - December 31, 2000.
Its premise is that *something* is going to happen at the end of this century.
There will be a 24-hour period in the course of which the planet will switch
over from the 20th century into the 21st century. Those 24 hours *could* take
the form of a global celebration that recognizes that something close to
Utopia has been achieved in the course of the proceeding eight years. Or it
*could* take the form of a despairing global recognition that life on this
planet is now doomed - even a global decision to commit suicide. Or it *could*
be the ultimate in superficial events, a global `party to end all parties'
after which nothing seems to have changed. Or it *could* be an electronic
global revolution, in which global freedom and community are finally achieved.
Or it *could* be a `coup in cyberspace', in which a self-congratulatory elite
assumes control of the New World Order *in the name of "GAIA 2000"* but fails
to bring about any satisfactory changes. Or it *could* be a deeply ambiguous
event in which none of the above characterizations seems adequate to describe
what happens. Or it *could* even take the form of a global "spiritual
experience" or "enlightenment"; a "planetary smile" or a "planetary
psychosis".
#___()---[]___## ...
\pippin\mint\reveg.doc
PROJECT REVEG
I propose a national project to revegetate the Outback. It will
make use of a vast area of land that currently just sits there. I can
see it as an experiment. An experiment to discover whether changing the
vegetation of an area can force a change in the weather patterns. Long
years ago, the changing of weather, for example, causing rain, was the
domain of the shaman or medicine man. This project could bring weathering
into the domain of science.
I propose 3 steps, like mini-projects, to be undertaken
contemporaneously. If the mini-projects are not undertaken at the same
time, the whole project will be hindered.
The mini-projects are:
(1) To divert water into the arid regions.
(2) To change the sand of the arid regions into soil.
(3) To encourage plant growth.
(1) Diverting water.
The water can be diverted by aqueducts or pipes, overland or
underground. It can be diverted from the eastern seaboard or the Murray
Basin or the Ord River or the Queensland Channel Country. The channels
of the channel country could be dammed as could the Todd River.
Underground reservoirs could be dug to store the diverted and/or dammed
water so as to minimize evaporation.
Water could also be pumped from the Great Artesian Basin with
recharging of the Basin occurring east of the Great Divide or anywhere
where there is abundant rainfall. Windmills and solar cells can be used
for power. There is much to consider if the groundwater is going to be
used. Victoria is now in the grip of dry-land salting because not
enough was understood about groundwater and the dynamics of the water
table.
(2) Development of soil.
Sand of the desert can be changed into soil. It requires the
addition of humus, and small sized dirt particles, ie clay and silt.
Organic waste can be used to provide the humus and nutrients. Organic
waste from the cities, even sewerage, can be used as organic. The newly
diverted water will be essential at this stage for the successful
decaying of the organic. Earthworms could also be cultivated to aid the
succesful the formation of soil.
(3) Plant growth.
This is the most exciting part because it will require an
intensive study of the vegetation that used to live in the arid regions
many thousands of years ago. It is possible that with the introduction
of more water to the arid regions, vegetation will regenerate all by
itself. I envisage that the vegetation that will first appear will more
likely be grass and scrub. Trees may need a little help from us.
Observation of what and how the plants pick up with the introduction of
more water should point us to the best way to actually plant more plants.
Starting off with belts of grasses, then shrubby type things, and
finally the more fragile plants and trees.
Finally, if this all works together, the plants should attract
their own moisture and change the weather patterns over the arid
regions to make life more feasible for themselves.
Ferals.
Another important action to be taken for the succesful
interaction of the Project will be the eradication of ferals: dogs,
cats, sheep, cattle, brumbies, rubber plants, lantana, groundsel.
Making way for a more harmonious ecology is a good excuse to get rid of
the ferals.
We may have to stop running cattle and sheep. The encouragement
of pastureland for these animals has degraded the land considerably. We
may have to stop growing sugarcane. As unthinkable as these
possibilities may be, they may have to be considered. They are not
natural to the land.
Cost
This could be an enormous venture and a very expensive one. We
have the examples of the revegetation of Israel and the building of the
largest dam in the world in Turkey to consider. It is important that
the revegetaion herald a new way of life for Australians. A push away
from the cities, back to nature. It is also important that this
project be saved from the technical jargon and specialization that
plagues so many scientific, economic and political ventures. Keeping
the jobs and management non-technical and non-specialist will allow the
10% of our workforce that is in desperate need to be IN the workforce a
chance to actively contribute to the shaping of a new society that is
not elitist.
If this venture ends up being "not economically viable", it
won't be economically viable until it is too late, or rather, not quite
too late. It is never too late. It will just get more and more expensive.
If we never do it, Gaia will eventually run us out of town and do it herself.
The politicians, I am sure, can sustain a pay cut for the cause of more
meaningful way of life for the Aussie battler. A little publicity to discover
the general opinion of Australians to this scheme will not go astray.
And Why?
And you may ask why? Why should we do this? I cannot say why we
should do this. Gaia's reasons are inscrutable. One reason might be to
repay the debt of our ancestors to the land. Another: to make the land
more habitable for when the sea rises and floods all of the capitals
except one. and another. Because it is there.
\qix\alphomeg.txt
"Message from the Author", March 1992:
THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE, THE ULTIMATE ANSWER, THE SECRET OF POWER.
You are living in a book, called "Alpha and Omega".
The plot is much too complex to summarize; indeed, some critics question
whether there *is* a plot, in the ordinary sense of the word.
However, the *form* of the book is described easily enough.
There are 24 chapters, each named for a letter in the Greek alphabet.
Each chapter corresponds to a year between 1989 and 2012 inclusive; thus Alpha
"is" 1989, Beta "is" 1990, and so on.
The book comes in two parts: Part I, "Gaia 2000", running from 1989 to 2000,
and Part II, "The Posthuman Condition", running from 2001 to 2012.
Part I begins with Alpha/1989 and the proclamation of the end of nature and
the end of history, and ends with Mu/2000 and the proclamation of the end of
*human* nature and the end of *human* history.
Part II begins with Nu/2001, the year of the Cosmic Child, and ends with
Omega/2012, the year of the Final Chapter.
Between Part I and Part II, "Alpha and Omega" the *Event* occurs.
The Event lasts 24 hours, from the last moment in which any place on Earth is
still within the year 2000, until the first moment in which every place on
Earth is within the year 2001.
Each "character" in the book must at some point decide what the Event is and
what their relationship to it is.
* * *
Written Notes, March 12:
Drafting a Plan for the Trip and the Book, which I intend shall be included in
the final form of AO.
The Trip (the important part)
Itinerary: USA (San Francisco - Chicago) - UK (& perhaps the Continent) - Rio,
Brazil.
Priority now is to ensure I can make the trip & survive it.
Need PASSPORT, VISAS (& other entry requirements), & MONEY.
1. Get birth certificate from C & N's, submit passport application.
2. Find out entry requirements for USA, UK, Brazil.
3. Souces of income which won't waste time ??
Contact new Chelsea residents.
The Book - Alpha and Omega (interesting part)
* is to be a book after the fashion of Irigaray, or R.A.W.'s novels, which is
not of any one genre - that way I can do all the things I've wanted to do with
it at once. Also like The Book of the SubGenius & Falcon Press in that it
mixes words & pictures AND threatens to become the reader's new reality. I
don't want to play games with the readers though, so perhaps autobiographical
narrative will form `spine'. Or this will be one way to read it. [Problem of
Desire for Self-Revelation confronted with Limitations of Expression]
* autobio runs until some time after Earth Summit
* in places: prev creations (1999, t6), expositions of others' ideas (Green,
Dobbs etc)
* rediscover all previous incarnations of AO (Qix/Velax, etc), discuss
motivations [eg self-creation] (Panspace, Geometropolis)
Principal Fiction (first outline):
- world in which AO has been epochal book - Dec 31, 2000 - 24 1-hr moments -
24 individuals acting out parts scripted in original AO - by this date most
of the world has heard of this strange book which some people are acting out
but 99% don't care, analyzing the event as insignificant for various reasons:
of these 10% have actually read it and there was a moment AS THEY READ IT
where they wondered if it might mean something...but dismissed the thought.
But 1 in 100 people were convinced that the book heralded that SOMETHING of
significance would occur on that date - this 1% mostly gravitate to one of the
24 forms in the book, or else rebel against all. So the point is: How much
power DOES a person have to create reality? To what extent is the structure of
the book a product of choice? (And by implication, the structure of the
future?) Are we all acting according to someone's script? If so, whose? How
does it feel? What is to be done? ET CETERA.
The 24 `types' will be generated partly through history, partly through
laziness and randomness, partly through attempts to represent all perspectives
& forms of experience in the 24. All 24 will presumably have read AO & know of
the other 23, so this awareness should be reflected, in some way, in the form
of their participation in The Event. All have chosen to be where they are, &
know they have chosen, etc.
(important part of autobio - imagining `acting out the Apocalypse' - AO is
exploring this desire)
24 individuals who have chosen the `AO' reality.
challenge will be to make them all people who would have chosen to be as
they are; each [writing is illegible at this point]
also includes `maps' of AO - ie ways to read the book
RELATIONSHIP OF AO TO EARTH SUMMIT & July 26 WILL BECOME CLEARER (prob July 26
will pass before AO in print)
* * *
Start of an early draft, `Alpha and Omega':
Chapter One Christchurch, Aotearoa (New Zealand)
Silence instead of the usual pop-rock intro. Then a loudening wind-whistle at
a pure steady pitch ... joined by a chorus all holding to the same note ...
`Kia ora. This is Keri McConnell with a Special Edition of the World News
at 11 pm, Radio Aotearoa's last World News report for the 20th century. You
have just heard the opening notes of the second World Concert, which will
continue nonstop for the next 24 hours, until all of the globe has entered the
new century. Its mastermind, Jean-Michel Jarre, orbits above us, overseeing
the actions of millions of participants around the planet. Last year he looked
down on a world in turmoil, as the people of Earth demanded global democracy.
Tonight he looks down on a world on the edge of utopia or oblivion.
`The focus of world attention continues to be Japan. Millions of Japanese
still occupy the streets of Tokyo and the other metropolitan centres. Members
of the Japanese wing of GAIA are believed to have effective control of most
financial systems and other electronic services. Security forces, widely
considered the government's last ally, are engaged in a tense stand-off with
demonstrators at many government and corporate buildings. The Emergency
Committee is in closed session and is believed to be considering appealing for
UN military intervention.
`UN Secretary-General Li Po has not been heard from for several hours, but
General John Mbaqa, former President of South Africa and Acting Head of
Allied Forces under the command of the United Nations, said in an interview on
CNN that he viewed the situation with great concern.'
General Mbaqa: `Japan is the organizational centre of the postsuperpower
world. A breakdown of order there would have catastrophic consequences for
the billions who rely on world organizations for their very survival and
physical safety, and for our collective management of the global economy and
ecology. The irresponsibility of these would-be revolutionaries knows no
limits. The world must be prepared to intervene, if the worst comes to the
worst. But I still hope and pray that the Japanese people, who have been such
an example to us all, will come to their senses.'
Keri McConnell: `Elsewhere in Asia: general strikes in Korea, South-east
Asia and southern China continue, drawing inspiration from Japan. In Europe
and America, millions are already congregating in preparation for the World
Acid Party which is to protest the internment without trial of space migration
pioneers by the UN. In the Middle East and elsewhere around the world many are
waiting for the Second Coming and the Day of Judgement, and there is a
widespread expectation that the GOLEM biocomputer, "the greatest single
intelligence in the history of life on Earth" according to its designers, will
announce soon that we are indeed about to reach the Omega Point about which so
many have speculated.
`In the course of the next hour we'll hear from Aotearoans in Tokyo,
Jerusalem, Berlin, Los Angeles, Seoul, Beijing, Riyadh and Moscow, but first
we'll cross to John Callaghan, who is with Prime Minister Tiaki Tainui in
Auckland.'
John Callaghan: `E pai ana, Keri. Prime Minister, I just watched as you
listened to Keri read the news, and let me say for our listeners that you
shook your head several times. What do you make of it all?'
Tiaki Tainui laughs.
* * *
So, what exactly am I trying to do here? This is not absolutely clear to me.
But at the very least, I am exploring a new form of interactive art. The next
23 `books' of `Alpha and Omega' are yet unwritten, and their content will rest
largely on the responses to the first postings. I envision it as an evolving
dialogue on the ideas hinted at here: could something like GAIA 2000 `work'?
What form might a global participatory `Event' take? Is such a thing possible,
desirable, relevant, useful, dangerous?
What will *your* relationship to "the Event" be?
<@,,,$...#...%>
\qix\qanda.txt
[saturday 18-04-92]
Q: What is `Alpha and Omega'?
A: It's the title for a work of art that I have been thinking about, on and
off, for ten years (since 1982). At the time I was watching Carl Sagan's
`Cosmos', reading science fiction, and I had a vague idea of writing a book in
two parts: `Alpha' was to be about the Big Bang and the early stages in the
evolution of the universe, and `Omega' about the final moments of time. After
a while it occurred to me that I might want to tell the middle of the story as
well; I also read about James Joyce and the novel `Ulysses', which was
supposed to be a chronicle of events on an ordinary day in Dublin in 1904, but
told in such a way that the structure of the story mimicked the original myth
of Ulysses, the point perhaps being that `ordinary' events can take on the
significance of myth, revealing to you Truths as Deep as anything found in
organized religion or science.
So by the mid-Eighties, when everyone was watching `The Day After' and
wondering if nuclear war was on the way, I now imagined the setting of `Alpha
and Omega' to be some depopulated, post-apocalyptic world. My protagonists were
to be a group of young people who had borrowed various names and logos left
over from our time as their own symbols - for example, my lead character had
called himself Qix after a video game.
AO was now the story of Qix's attempt to imitate or improve on Joyce in his
own time, as follows: he created in himself, through a technique like auto-
hypnosis, a second personality (which I called a `daemon') named `Qix II'
which was to observe the events in a day in his life and fashion a narrative
from them as they occurred; I think his hope was that after the day was
finished, he would retrieve the narrative somehow and find cosmic meanings in
it. Since there are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, I now envisioned a 24-
chapter book, one chapter for each hour in the course of Qix's day. The book
that the reader finally saw was to be the narrative produced by Qix II.
I envisioned the course of events to be something like this: at the start
Qix wakes up and begins the day's work, but after one hour (that is, after one
chapter) he finds himself plunged into a dreamlike world, and this state now
lasts for an hour. Then he is back in `reality', and this alternation
continues to the end. In the 12 `dream' chapters, he passes through something
like the 12 Labors of Hercules, which is a myth he knows about from his
reading; it gradually becomes clear that while he is in this `fugue' state,
`Qix II' has been controlling his body back in physical reality. The actions
of Qix II become more and more extreme, and the book was to turn into a battle
by Qix to discover what Qix II's intentions are.
QIX MUD - write your own `AO'. or SUD, anyway.
<<...=[]=...>>
\pippin\cloud\gaia.not
July 22, 1992
in the hallowed home of Abulafia J. Purpleflower
and on the internet somewhere there is a place like FurryMUCK where
everyone can like ring up or call to present a global picture of
"how is the earth today?"
the internet as the global mind. it will be a new stage of integration
but the internet *is* anarchy there is no control
CNN is the Great Beast
the internet is multi-version multi-layer reality
the internet as an academic wank
all paths lead to BOB
but that only makes sense
all points lead to one point.
and here it is...
==> .
a point this place is "IT"!
but it is everyway as all lines are everywhere
CNN is one reality
internet is all realities
meta-reality ;all realities `
Church of V\R will be the new world religion instead of the Church of
the Sub-Genius because the Sub-Genius has made promises that it can't
keep but V\R hasn't
COBOL was the programming language of the Devil
COBOL is a business language and the love of money drives a lot of business,
to programme in COBOL, you have to bureaucratize your mind
so COBOL is the language of the Devil.
"COBOL would be cool if it wasn't for all the Bullshit in the middle"
-- Shub
Join the Church of V\R, and save the world in your spare time.
THE GUMBALL MACHINE
there is a gumball dispenser, but there are no gumballs in it.
so it is a lolly dispenser, because you can put more than gumballs in
it. but to be more non-specific, it is a confectionary dispenser. and
to be more non-specific again, it is a thingy dispenser. but the thingy
dispenser is the Ugyldig, the place from which all thingys come. the
thingys also being the thoughts. so the Gumball Dispenser is the
Ugyldig.
\qix\t15.txt
T15: Church of the SubGenius, Church of V/R, CNN, the Internet, and the
Apocalypse.
Arguably the New World Order is the culmination of the historical
process of integration through militarization. There is no world state,
but there is a world-system without serious ideological competition
between different elites. In "Dateline for Dominance", written 1982, the
Book of the SubGenius tells us that 1991 was to bring World War III, and
in 1992 there would be a "Global Congress" lorded over by the Anti"Bob".
Of course, the Gulf War occurred in 1991, and the Earth Summit in 1992,
and so SubGenius prophecy suggests that the Anti"Bob", the human head of
the Conspiracy, is in fact George Bush. ("there is no branch of
conspiracy theory which cannot find a home for this man" - MONDO 2000)
But just as we have arrived at a point where the G-7 countries and the
UN Security Council are attempting to manage world politics and
economics in a unified fashion, millions of people are despairing of
politics and economics and looking for hope and understanding in the
"New Age" or in various religious fundamentalisms. All the New World
Order appears to promise is an unending series of disciplinary military
interventions a la Iraq and L.A. Some people are literally looking for a
higher power to step and save in them, whether it is Christ II, the Hidden
Imam or the Space Brothers, while others are looking for a moral and
spiritual renewal by finding a new guru, World-Teacher, Avatar etc.
Cable News Network (CNN) was I believe founded in 1980, but it was the
Gulf War in 1991 which really marked its entry into history. During
World War 2, FDR Churchill and Hitler all used mass media such as radio
to provide a common virtual experience for their respective nations.
Just as the wartime Allies formed the nucleus of the postwar United
Nations, mythic national identities were probably put forward in the
course of WW2 which continued to influence the world in the postwar era.
Bush used CNN to create a virtual experience for the world when he
announced that "the world could wait no longer". The announcement of the
beginning of hostilities was made in an "Address to the Nation", but it
was really an address to the planet, and the multinational nature of
Desert Storm meant that it was important to refer to "world opinion". So
the Gulf War seems to have greatly accelerated the formation of a mythic
global identity; subsequent "global" media events such as the coup in
Moscow and the summit in Rio are further critical points in the
evolution of this global culture, and both were mediated by CNN.
So I predict that in the course of the nineties, as various spiritual and
apocalyptic movements become more and more influential in global
politics, that more and more topics once considered esoteric will take
their turn under the scrutiny of the world media: traditional esoterica,
Theosophy, Magick... and all such searching must lead ultimately to
"BOB". "BOB" is the ultimate esoteric "it". Sold to the world using
every mystic sales-trick in the book, by 1998 the SubGenius "ideology"
will be in the spotlights of even mainstream global media... and
ultimately CNN will act as soapbox for Dobbs.
"There has been a lasting occult tradition that Ahriman, the figure of
the Anti-Christ, will be born in the year 1998, a number which is a
multiple of 666... The third multiple of 666 will take place in 1998
when the fallen Seraphim, Ahriman, the very spirit of materialism will
incarnate in the flesh personally to direct the total destruction of the
spiritual aims of Christianity." - "The Mark of the Beast", Trevor
Ravenscroft and T. Wallace-Murphy
According to the SubGenius "Prescriptures", "Bob" "gives life to the
image of the Beast in order to warn you of its coming". My theory of the
moment is that "Bob" is a fictional character crafted to look like both
Savior and Destroyer. And struggling to understand the nature of "Bob"
may well lead a lot of people to question a lot of things they once took
for granted. But "Bob", being fictional, can't actually save or end the
world himself; but if "Bob" can't, who can?
My answer is, everyone and no-one. There is a stream of esoteric
Christian thought which anticipates a "Second Coming", not in the form
of a new Messiah - we've already had more than enough of those! - but in
the form of a global shift of consciousness (Barbara Marx Hubbard's
"planetary smile") in which universal compassion is realized in every
individual. The creation of a situation in which each individual gets to
act out the nature of their virtuality, at the same time as everyone
else. But for there to be a collective experience of this sort, the
medium that mediates the experience must permit, in some sense, the
equal participation of all. And for that, CNN just won't do. No matter
how global its reach, CNN is still a single channel, and thus in a sense
a single virtuality.
BUT THE INTERNET IS NOT. Usenet News, for example, is a multiple-reality
medium. Email is a bidirectional channel of communication, unlike TV.
CNN could be the medium of choice for a global electronic feudalism, but
the Internet is surely the medium of choice for global electronic
democracy. The "point" of GAIA 2000 is to bring about a historical
"event" which will mark the entry of the Internet into the "real world".
So the Church of the SubGenius may be grabbing the headlines in 1998,
but the Church of V/R will be there in 2000.
(July 23, 1992)
<...ooo000ooo..oOOOoo...oo000ooo...>
\qix\qixatuq.not
1988 - first year at UQ
IH - reading about futurism, room wall papered with cutouts
first visit to IH disco
corresponding with friends
doing mathematics and physics
in 2nd half, corroboree, frequent trips to Sydney
with keith, reality exploration - falcon press bx, r.a.w & LEARY
bmh - imagination, will , reality
schismatrix - cyberpunk
university challenge
1989
min maths in first half, gpa very low
buy `engines of creation'
soiree occupies a lot of year, along with perennial AO plans plus other idle 1
2nd half - hitching with christine after moving out of ih
terence mckenna in `magical blend'
fm-2030
1990
back in bris - no money (austudy revoked) - homeless - also read celia green
australian revolution [later oz as 1st country to accept thelema]
`infinity' newsletter - plan to go to uk
find a house - go to lectures again - meet jodie eden - fun park
seth - french philosophy - ayn rand, murray rothbard, links with green
2nd half of yr - new house with pip
getting heavily into physics - 6 mths or so selfdirected work in QM, GR,
string theory, wondering about mind and matter etc, go to nightclubs a few
times meet new types of people
1991
dance party - glasses broken and lost forever on new years' day - watching CNN
and finding out about cognitive psychology - neural nets a new focus of
interest - moments of panic during gulf war [visit to D]
rent expensive - move in downstairs with vic and sim - rent about$20/wk
- 'go out' to dance maybe once every few weeks
ISO and Conservative meetings on NWO, and Sahaja Yoga
environmentalism and feminism
win suncorp competition on the future - notified during party at chelsea
buy D's computer - beginning of electronic diary
vallee
vic doing computer science - start to discover electronic networks, using
computer's modem - email
usenet news
later from UQ via Internet, Acid and Chelsea to GAIA 2000
[trip details] - including message to ksundeen
AI exam - handing out invites to Saturday Night party on back of photocopied
notes
double exclusion
remember metallica video `one' on t2 - then lawnmower deth, sonic youth etc
excerpts from t6
1992 [see other files]
1988 - first year at UQ
IH - reading about futurism, room wall papered with cutouts
first visit to IH disco
corresponding with friends
doing mathematics and physics
in 2nd half, corroboree, frequent trips to Sydney
with keith, reality exploration - falcon press bx, r.a.w & LEARY
bmh - imagination, will , reality
schismatrix - cyberpunk
university challenge
In my first year at UQ, I lived in an International House college, of which
there are hundreds around the world. They are distinguished by always playing
host to many students from outside the country in which they are located. I
was enrolled in mathematics and physics and got a reasonably high "GPA" (grade
point average), but my mind was elsewhere. I was discovering the existence of
a large body of "futurist" literature, which took the futurological
imagination seriously, thought about all the ways in which the future might be
different, and tried to plan on a big scale. I was most attracted to the
"cosmic optimists" among the futurists, foremost among whom was FM Esfandiary.
Born in Iran in 1930, but now living around the world, in one of his books
("Upwingers", of which I have never found a copy), he describes himself thus:
[QUOTE FROM FUTURIST]
The central library had a copy of his book "Optimism One", written in 1970,
which is advancing a revolutionary new philosophy of optimism, based upon the
supposition that humanity as a species really is on the edge of escaping our
creaturely limitations - that we are on our way to being free in Space, able
to move further out into the universe, and free in Time, able to extend our
lifespans indefinitely. The idea that this is clearly possible, and that the
perception of that possibility ought to revolutionize all our expectations
about the future, made complete sense to me.
[FINAL PARAGRAPH FROM OPTIMISM ONE]
In reading through and photocopying back issues of "The Futurist" I also came
across the writings of Barbara Marx Hubbard, who purveyed a concept of
"spiritual futurism". In her own way she was as Promethean as Esfandiary,
advocating space colonization, life extension, etc, but also ecological
management and what would now be called "New Age" goals; and she argued that
the technological and social transformations of our age are in fact the
fulfilment of the religious hopes and prophecies of all ages, and that what
distinguishes the spiritual futurist is a deep intuition of a creative
intention present in all things. I had reservations about the "creative
intention" and "spiritual" part since I didn't understand them and they
sounded like an endorsement of religion, but since she obviously possessed the
"correct" attitude I also made a mental note to keep my eyes open for her
autobiography, "The Hunger of Eve". I never found it, but a year or so later I
found "The Evolutionary Journey", published in 1982, which is apparently her
complete exposition of her philosophy as of that date, along with a little
autobiography. I wrote her a letter expressing some of my own hopes and asking
for more information on any networks, foundations etc of which she might be a
part, but it was returned unopened; she had moved from the Washington address.
Also in 1988 I spent some time reading what has now become well-known as
cyberpunk sf. Everyone knows about "Neuromancer" by William Gibson, in which
the world is run by global corporations, and an artifical intelligence placed
in orbit schemes to free itself from the controls of its human creators -
although it h
as been created by them in order to do that in the first place -
and in which much of the human population's time is spent in "cyberspace",
humanity's "consensual hallucination", which in turn inspired much of the
work and philosophizing on virtual reality that is now underway... But in 1988
I encountered a book which seemed much more important to me as an expression
of the true potentialities of the future, in which science alters human
culture and consciousness and technology alters the human form, and this was
"Schismatrix" by Bruce Sterling. In this novel, the Earth has been devastated
by "war plagues" and icecap meltings and other unspecified disasters, leaving
a totalitarian antitechnology regime in charge of the planet, an emergency
government that has swallowed all previous human cultures and has stifled
change in the name of humanity. In space, two grand coalitions of "factions"
are engaged in a sort of "cold war" over the nature of "human": the Mechanists
who have extended their lives through cybernetic means such as artifcial
limbs and the "downloading" of dimensions of their personalities/characters
into software, and the Shapers, who use "psychotechnologies" such as mind-
altering drugs, and genetic engineering. In the course of events the world
changes many times over, in the sense that fundamental assumptions are
constantly in question; aliens arrive but prove to be mere traders, ultimately
frightened by humanity's persistence in pursuing knowledge and change; the
Mechanist and Shaper ideologies wither with time as new ones arrive -
Posthumanism, which seeks for people to reconceptualize themselves as neither
human, Mechanist nor Shaper, but as "cognitive metasystems" existing on the
"Fourth Prigoginic Level of Complexity"; Zen Serotonin, whose adherents seek
to still the process of change, believing it arises from alienation and
internal distress, and who use Mechanist technology to administer doses of
the brain chemical serotonin to themselves in order to attain the Zenlike
state of calm and detachment... By the end of the book posthuman "clades" or
daughter species, "hopeful monsters", are proliferating across the solar
system and there is an intimation that an even more profound change is
imminent, comparable to the emergence of life from non-life... I felt, "This
book does justice to the complexity of the future in a way I have never seen
anywhere else. I actually felt disturbed by technological alterations of human
beings for the first time in anything that I have read. I also was annoyed
with the author for still having conflict in there - of the Mechanist/Shaper
sort..." That last thought I think is attributable to annoyance at the fact
that Sterling did not introduce any utopian final state of society. His
chief protagonist, in fact, undergoes a final transformation which is a
renunciation of all searches for ultimates, preferring instead to dwell in
"the Indefinite, for that's where all beauty lives..."
1989
min maths in first half, gpa very low
buy `engines of creation'
soiree occupies a lot of year, along with perennial AO plans plus other idle 1
2nd half - hitching with christine after moving out of ih
terence mckenna in `magical blend'
fm-2030
In the first half of this year I entered a minimal enrolment in mathematics,
went to almost no lectures and failed most of my subjects. I spent some of my
time trying to plan for Soiree, IH's annual event in which it opened to the
outside world, presenting food stalls, a concert, national displays... I was
unable to decide how best to use university, I couldn't see a course on
`Futurism' anywhere and didn't want to dissipate my energies in any particular
course - I still trusted my own sense of what I ought to be doing, I guess...
In the first half of '89 I finally found a copy of Eric Drexler's book
"Engines of Creation", of which I had read two years before in Omni.
In '89 I also came across an essay in a magazine called "Magical Blend" by
Terence McKenna, of whom I had read in "Cosmic Trigger" the year before. It
was very mysterious writing for me, attractive and mysterious... It talked
about the world of dream as being real, about "visible reality" as being the
surface of the world of dream in a literal, geometric, higher-dimensional
sense, about human history as being a process whereby some incredible entity
at the end of time comes into being... saying things like there are two
aspects to existence, forward flowing causality, and the backward projection
of this entity at the end of time or history, as it comes into being - this
final entity being something like the materialization or manifestation of
humanity's collective consciousness... I guess you'd have to read it.
In '89 I also found a book by Esfandiary again - only now he was called FM-
2030, having chosen his new name in order to be identified by his future
rather than his past, according to the blurb. IT was called "Are You a
Transhuman?" and took the form of a selfhelp book, composd of a number of
quizzes, to let you judge for yourself how attuned to the emerging world of
the future you are and how you might wish to change in order to enjoy the
process more and speed up your arrival there. The concept of "progressive" in
this book assumed a breadth of meaning I had seen nowhere else - not just
progressive in one's concepts or use of technology or compassion or lifestyle,
but in all of these at once. I was glad to see that his philosophy of optimism
had progressed from 1970 to this; it showed he was still alive and changing.
1990
back in bris - no money (austudy revoked) - homeless - also read celia green
australian revolution [later oz as 1st country to accept thelema]
`infinity' newsletter - plan to go to uk
find a house - go to lectures again - meet jodie eden - fun park
seth - french philosophy - ayn rand, murray rothbard, links with green
2nd half of yr - new house with pip
getting heavily into physics - 6 mths or so selfdirected work in QM, GR,
string theory, wondering about mind and matter etc, go to nightclubs a few
times meet new types of people
1991
1991 began for me at the first really large dance party I ever went to:
thousands of people many wearing outrageous costumes, strange overhead
displays and flashing lights, dancing until I was drenched in sweat, all this
took place on New Years' Eve. It was at this dance party that my glasses fell
out of my pocket and were smashed; I haven't replaced them since.
I spent January days watching CNN as the deadline for war in the Gulf
approached, and watching my focus shift from physics to cognitive science as
I learned more about neural networks. I first heard that the war had started
over the radio in a car, and followed the early days like the rest of the
human race, I think - fascinated and horrified and very confused. After the
war I found that the images of smart bombs and destroyed landscapes had
stimulated my militaristic imagination [`appetite for destruction'?] - I would
look at a building and imagine a Cruise missile entering it and destroying it,
or flying overhead on its way to who-knows-where. The observation of this in
myself convinced me for the first time of the power of images to stimulate
like thoughts.
dance party - glasses broken and lost forever on new years' day - watching CNN
and finding out about cognitive psychology - neural nets a new focus of
interest - moments of panic during gulf war [visit to D]
rent expensive - move in downstairs with vic and sim - rent about$20/wk
- 'go out' to dance maybe once every few weeks
ISO and Conservative meetings on NWO, and Sahaja Yoga
environmentalism and feminism
win suncorp competition on the future - notified during party at chelsea
buy D's computer - beginning of electronic diary
vallee
vic doing c! iroducpirbAHd/ àH øø @À Lølectronic networks, using
computer's modem - email
usenet news
later from UQ via Internet, Acid and Chelsea to GAIA 2000
[trip details] - including message to ksundeen
AI exam - handing out invites to Saturday Night party on back of photocopied
notes
double exclusion
remember metallica video `one' on t2 - then lawnmower deth, sonic youth etc
excerpts from t6
phil - `there is no death'
\qix\qix92.not
During Christmas I visited my mother at home and told her about my new
lifestyle of hacking, tripping and vagrancy, but felt unable to explain
adequately why I had done it, trusting that time would give me the chance to
do so. She was politely appalled and didn't understand, but I think she felt
that there must be a reason and so didn't `disown' me.
On my first night back in XCity I saw the Japanese animated film `Akira' and
was tremendously impressed, especially by the way in which the filmmakers were
able to show us the worlds of so many different parts of society: the military
and the ruling council, the scientists, the bikers... and by the apocalyptic
final events, in which Neo-Tokyo is destroyed and the new psychic posthumans
leave Earth behind.
The next day I wandered around Brisbane and realized that according to most
familiar standards I had reached a real low. I still had my dreams of the
future and many creative projects but all of this was in abeyance; in the
mean time I was homeless and taking drugs. I had one trip left, a "snowflake";
I took it about 3 pm that afternoon. A little while into the trip I decided
it would be my last.
t7
maleny
INTERNET posting
ao back - sharetext
apocalypse script book from uq
This time I came to conceive of "Alpha and Omega" as a 24-chapter book written
from the perspective of 24 individuals, each one's section lasting an hour,
each in a successive time zone, as I had done before; but I realized that the
concept of a collective experience for the whole of humanity, such as I had
imagined on my second trip, could provide a continuity of events that would
withstand the problem of a book in which each chapter introduced a new
protagonist. I came to imagine the world self-consciously entering this
ultimate collective experience, in which everyone might be participating but
in which some people would be more prominent than others; and so I imagined
it reaching its climax in the form of some sort of confrontation or encounter
between the head of a World State, who I envisioned as a Chinese man, the
first elected head of the UN, and a black American woman who I was to christen
`Madonna X', who would be seen as the spirit of many things: rebellion, the
potential for cooperation without a controller... Their meeting would be a
symbolic reconciliation of many divergent tendencies within the human mind,
between Male and Female, Law and Freedom, etc, an attempt to have them meet
in such a way that they could dramatize this reconciliation on behalf of
humanity and thus end such conflicts in people's minds once and for all. Later
on I would see him as trying to understand their confrontation, in terms of
himself and herself as an incarnation of something - am I evil and she good?
am I mind and she body? while she steadfastly refuses to be interpreted as
anything at all other than herself, and her refusal to acquiesce or resist to
any system of interpretation, to be savior or be saved, and his understanding
of this, is a sort of Zen enlightenment which he undergoes and which ends
forever the divisive epoch of human consciousness. But then the final chapter
comes and the world computer speaks.. etc blah blah
After writing several thousand words of the first chapter, I realized that the
whole book would be impossibly long, and so imagined making a movie of it
instead. Or perhaps a 24-hour virtual reality experience, which would only be
possible for people with very expensive technology... which made me decide
that it had to be a movie instead. But that in turn required simplifying the
plot... but making a movie is difficult... so in the end I returned to the
idea of writing it, but writing it as a screenplay, so that it would be easy
to read and might yet be filmed as well.
Keperra
free - j griff
karina
I realized that I needed an independent income, but I didn't want to be
wasting my time as I earned money. I had a few friends who had canvassed door-
to-door for Greenpeace, so I applied for a job there. I got it, but I quit
after three days since I saw a cynicism starting to emerge in myself that was
already present in the other canvassers, and I wanted to preserve myself from
that. (The turning point came when at one house I said, "Hello, I'm from
Greenpeace"; through the door I could see a family seated at a dinner table,
and the kindly middle-aged lady who answered the door said something like,
"I'm sorry, but we're busy having tea". I said, "That's OK", and left, and as
I went away I repeated quietly to myself, "Busy having tea", "Busy having
tea", and thinking, "Sorry, we don't want to know about the fate of the planet
- we're busy having tea", and then I realized that I was bitterly mocking them
in my mind and actions, which was the sort of thing I didn't want to make a
habit of. I thought I could see that there's always a reason why someone
doesn't want to see you, and there's a reason why a canvasser doesn't want to
let it go at that, but I don't want to follow either of those paths since that
way I will dissipate whatever my own unique contribution to the course of
events could be. So I quit after three days, but in that time I learned just
how remarkably informed the global Greenpeace organization is concerning the
state of the planet, linked up as it is by its internal network of faxes and
modems; I saw horrifying and moving adverts that were soon to premiere in
Europe which made me appreciate further why so many people saw humanity
collectively as a villain; I heard an announcement that the phoneline into
the office was most likely bugged, bringing home to me the reality of
espionage and covert operations; and I perused their files looking for
references to the Earth Summit, finding a statement from Maurice Strong that
he wished the event to be either `a success or a dramatic failure'.
fawnia
Around this time, while in conversation with someone, a phrase occurred to me,
with which I could characterize my philosophical and political outlook:
`anarcho-techno-animism'. Anarcho- for freedom, techno- for the `immanent
transcendence' that I only saw technology as bringing, animism because it
seemed likely to me that every part of the world IS alive in some sense.
Bob
I went to see a friend, my `first love' of childhood, and read through her
poems. They evoked strange thoughts and feelings in me, and as I walked home
they crystallized into an idea: that Earth might be an enormous interactive
virtual-reality system for the stars. If the stars are conscious, and the
planets are heavy matter pulled out of the nebula of a young star by the
gravity of all the others and made to assume rounded shapes and elliptical
orbits through the resonant interaction of gravity and electromagnetism,
then perhaps each star in the universe still exerts a specific influence upon
what goes on on the surface of Earth, and each `soul' on Earth is a star; in
other words every man and woman literally is a star... Perhaps, I fantasized,
there is a wormhole in each of us connecting us to the specific star who we
are... Thinking about us as the stars led me to think in a new light of the
four forces of physics, trying to interpret them as something which could be
felt. Gravity, being a universally attractive force, `corresponded' to
unconditional love, while light is the manifestation of one's Self.. The weak
and strong forces I wasn't sure about.. I recalled from my reading on quantum
gravity and Grand Unified field theories that it was likely that there was
only one `superforce' at the Planck scale, at which quantum gravity ought to
come into play, in which case love would be the basic force in the universe...
I also had an image of the Big Bang to Big Crunch cosmology, in which there
is a final black hole... which made me think of Celia Green, because all of
that mutual attraction led to mutual destruction... or perhaps a
transcendental union.
cocreators in panspace
CREATION
thetic
see MAR12PLA
After my encounter with the "thetic", I conceived of "Alpha and Omega" in a
new way; as a sort of "thought virus", much as the concepts of SubGenius seem
to be; taking the physical form of a book or a film, but really spreading an
awareness of the malleability of reality itself.
virtuality/reality
karina
After speaking with my friend I came to a new thought: perhaps everyone has
Infinite Intelligence and Infinite Compassion, but is working only with Finite
Information, and this is why it does not always look that way.
ak47 dream
m2
Islamic mysticism - Shaun "so that's why you've staged this whole game"
[imagining being Author - taking responsibility for every fact -
analogue to Buddha or Christ - but is there a cosmic author as well?]
"play the game, boy!"
[Eater of Souls] - Nietzsche's final days
In "New Age" magazine I found a review of a new book coauthored by William
Irwin Thompson, and a few days later it was pointed out to me in a bookshop
and I bought it. "Reimagination of the World" is a set of seminars given by
Thompson and David Spangler of Findhorn; its subtitle is "A Critique of the
New Age, Science, and Popular Culture". The idea which I picked up from it was
that levels of being Thompson calls elemental and angelic correspond to
aspects of existence that science would call bacterial and topological. Myth,
folklore and dream all consist of the entry of information into human culture
from these nonhuman realms.
There is an afterword by Thompson on the Gulf War, in which he says that
Saddam Hussein's insanity created an opportunity for elemental possession
which manifested itself in the burning oil wells of Kuwait; now the elemental
is visible to the human, and the caretakers of the global economy must
acknowledge the existence of the ecology in which they are embedded. I was
reminded of my own thought of a few weeks earlier, that the Gulf War was a
showdown between the Rebel Gods and the Elder Gods, and that Iraq, although
nominally a Muslim country, might be a place where older Sumerian deities
still reigned in some form; whereas the United States is clearly the home of
both JHVH-1 and Eris. I was also reminded that World War III was to take place
in 1991 according to the SubGenius prophecies.
I also thought of how the Elder Gods were supposed to have designed and
directed the course of evolution, and thought of the four basic amino acids
that make up DNA...
Jeremy Griffith's appearance on campus
In the day prior to Griffith's appearance, as I conceived of telling him
about the Earth Summit, I felt real fear about whether I was taking the right
step or not; by doing so I would perhaps precipitate a World State with its
Science-Religion of Love, and would the experience of that be Heaven or Hell?
I had no idea.
g1
[reality becoming like tv screen - brain of God etc]
mood swings
On April Fool's Day I was in a black mood. I felt as if I was really hating
reality in a way that I couldn't ever remember doing, and I asked myself, am I
hating everyone else as well? I didn't like that thought, and it still didn't
seem appropriate, so I thought, perhaps what I am really feeling is a hatred
of all limitations, and a hatred of our basic uncertainty, and the great
futility of purposeful action. I remembered one night when I met Nathan: he
was drunk, and was talking about the people around us in the mall. Once before
he had expressed concern that he was losing his purity and worrying too much
about others, and I asked him why he bothered at all, and he said they looked
like poor lost sheep to him, with no idea where they were going. This night he
said to me, "I hate them all", and after a pause, "I hate myself". Was this
what I was now feeling myself? Not knowing my own feelings almost seemed worse
than truly believing that I hated the whole of existence, myself and other
people included. I remembered the end of Neuromancer, where the computer is
persuading Case to take the final step that will free it from human
constraint. The key, it tells him, is hate. He has to hate in order to finish
his task. He asks it, "Who do I hate?" And it replies, "Who do you love?" And
it is self-hate that propels him through the final phase of defences. After I
came home and wished myself to sleep, I thought of that, and thought, perhaps
this will be the way in which "technology", incarnate in something like
Skynet or Internet, will finally overwhelm the human race; by asking of it,
"Who do you love?" One of the final images before I slept was from Celia
Green: a perception of the similarity between this planet and an anthill
spinning in space. I felt burnt out, not as if I wasn't feeling anything any
more, but as if I didn't even know if I was feeling or not.
The next morning I could remember all that I had thought, even if I didn't
understand it, and felt that some new phase was upon me. I reread
"Reimagination of the World", especially the sections pertaining to multi-
dimensional realities beyond this. In this conception, evil is seen as that
which seeks to limit the nature of reality - wants to stop the world changing
beyond what it understands - seeks to restrict a multidimensional universe to
some small number of dimensions. I began to imagine every person I saw as a
multidimensional being whose three-dimensional incarnation that was visible
to me as only the tip of an iceberg. I saw real humour as a sudden sensation
of higher dimensions - bisociation as Arthur Koestler called it. I began to
imagine that I was truly beyond worries about good and evil, and that I could
start to think of the world as play without worrying about evasion. Whatever
the purpose of existence is, whatever I see must be one manifestation of that,
so instead why not concentrate on trying to realize as many dimensions as
possible in the world, through the pursuit of harmony and beauty and fun?
290392
abulafia
timeship earth 2013
Shaun - perception, imagination, will (Will to Power)
atheist society
reality = imagination
[ellison]
If I'm going to become God, I'd rather do it along with everyone else who
wants to. [Eater of Souls - Yog-Sothoth, God]
\qix\4aug91.txt
WORLDVIEW as of 4 August 1991
Political/economic/ideological outlook:
I think that a world system of nation-states with market economies and
multi-party political systems, grouped in the United Nations, is flexible
enough to be able to evolve in any desired direction - so reform not
revolution. I am rejecting large-scale upheaval because it seems
unnecessarily destructive, from where I sit.
Realistic hope for information age: that majority class will be that of
technician/manager, overseeing infrastructures and ecologies, with a
minimization of menial uninteresting work (not forgetting that most of this
is located in households, not factories).
The outlook of my ideal culture would be libertarian, scientific and
compassionate.
Personal philosophy:
I have NO opinion regarding anyone's candidate for the Ultimate Truth. To
use a metaphor: my situation is as if I am seated before a terminal, one node
in a network whose full dimensions - in time, space, levels of complexity - I
cannot see from here. For now I would better understand my immediate vicinity
rather than speculate on whether the totality is finite or infinite, caused or
causeless, mechanistic or teleological ...
S.M.I^2.L.E. (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension) still
describes the type of everyday life I hope to see realized in the future (as
soon as possible!): a world where people can defer death indefinitely and have
access to all of humanity's knowledge, and where the human sphere is expanding
beyond Earth. In particular, so long as people are limited in time, to me all
our other achievements are rendered futile. Death is my ultimate enemy.
There are three areas where I would like to make progress in my understanding:
quantum measurement; conscious experience; anomalous phenomena. I think I need
progress in the second area, and probably the first, before I can hope to make
any headway in the third area.
<,,,...///>
\qix\91ttd.txt
20 JULY 1991
3part research priorities stand as
CONSCIOUSNESS (COGNITIVE SCIENCE / NEUROSCIENCE)
QUANTUM MECHANICS / STRING THEORY
ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA
Strategies.
1. Consciousness. Accumulate "maps of consciousness".
Look at global models from cognitive science.
Look at global models from neuroscience.
2. Physics. Special relativity, general relativity.
Quantum mechanics, quantum field theory.
Standard Model, string theory.
3. Anomalous phenomena. Exhaustive typology.
OVNIBASE-style records.
Field work.
1a. Maps of the mind. 1b. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness.
1c. Neural Darwinism; The Remembered Present.
2a. Riemannian geometry. 2b. QFT textbooks.
2c. conference proceedings, current journals.
3a. Charles Fort. The New Inquisition.
3b. Jacques Vallee. Celia Green. newsgroups.
3c. local groups; travel plans.
?...!...?
\qix\prophecy.txt
WHAT WILL BECOME OF V/R AND GAIA 2000?
1997...
Brisbane nuked by renegade SubGenius faction that believes it is
striking a mortal blow against the Elder Gods...
but by then the information of freedom was loose on the Internet, and the
transformation could not be reversed...
CAFEs and street communications centres proliferated in the major urban
centres of the world...
the computer underground and posttechno culture crossbred, leading to
intercontinental raves integrated by pirated satellite communications...
by 2000 half the world population was under 20, and half of it inhabited
cities...
the New Aeon of Horus truly arrived with this teledemocratic
anarchopsychedelic global youth revolution in which the world turned upside-
down...
civilization ended, not with an environmental/economic catastrophe
but with a psychic catastrophe in which the old archetypes were exploded...
while the 42-month reign of the Great Beast Bob came to its end, the Internet
became the medium for an esoteric Second Coming and global transformation of
mind...
all of which was precipitated by the original Scriptures of V/R...
[july 25 '92]
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\pippin\rave\diary.doc
\pippin\rave\puppy.doc
\pippin\rave\poetry.doc
\pippin\rave\blue.rav
\pippin\rave\sleep.doc
\qix\t6.txt
\qix\aya
\pippin\rave\house.doc
\pippin\rave\truth.rav
\pippin\stories\bill.sty
\pippin\stories\dave.sty
\pippin\stories\daniel.sty
\pippin\rave\diary.doc
June 23, 1992
DIARIES
Diaries are like mirrors. You can see through a wall into
another world through a mirror. Go on. Try it. Diaries can make you
laugh, and they can make you cry. Diaries can be full of pearls of
wisdom, and they can be full of shit. A diary is a mirror of you.
You, frozen into a moment of time and pinned to a page. A
window on the past. Does this embarrass you? Or is it the thought that
one day someone else may read a diary entry of yours that holds you back
from keeping a diary? One day someone well. Diaries magnetically
attract readers to themselves. They are called diary rays.
That person will probably be you. You in a year's time, or
maybe just a month. A month is long enough to think, "Did I write
*that*?" Usually, old diaries entries just embarass yourself. Other
people don't know you like you do. They just read your diary. But your
future selves know you. They know you better than you ever will because
they've "Been There". Your future selves will laugh at you. They
always do that.
Diaries are time travelling. By writing in a diary, you can
talk to a future self. By reading your diary over again, you can talk
to a past self. Past selves often get lonely.
If you are honest with yourself when you write in your diary,
your past selves will be honest with you. Diaries give you a more
complete picture of yourself.
Past selves get distressed too. That's when they send out an
S.O.S. ie a diary entry. Your future selves can tell you too that life
is not all distressing, but past selves don't seem to write about every
day, pleasant things.
The grandeur of the moment of a poetic thought is all that bears
remembering. But then I forget how ordinary I am. That's what I was.
Ordinary. My past reminds me of what I was and still am. And it can
tell me what I still hope to be.
\pippin\rave\puppy.doc
There are other selves inside you. Not just past and future
selves, but higher and lower selves, god selves, spirit selves, and
puppy selves.
Your selves always talk to you. Or rather, they would like to
always be listened to. They can talk to you through a sunrise or music
or a book or poetry. Sometimes they talk to you through the mouths of
your friends. That is always interesting.
Well, have you ever wondered why "you" is both singular and
plural?
I say they would like to talk to you all the time. They would
go on and on and never stop!
But I only have one other self. That talks to me, that is. It
has a voice. A human voice. I have to imagine it though. There isn't
really a voice that I hear. I have to pretend it is me too. Sometimes
it can be interesting, and funny, and witty. Sometimes it tells me what
to do. But that's my fault. I only listen to it when I want to know
something to get me out of trouble. I think it gets peeved with me when
I do that.
Then there is my puppy self. It is like Freud and Jung's
psychology of the id, ego, and superego. The id self says one thing and
the superego self says another. But they can't hear each other. Or
maybe they won't. Maybe they are like an elderly married couple that
after so many years only talk through their children. That's where the
puppy self comes in. The puppy self is like a dog. It is dumb, it is
cute, and it bounds around.
The puppy self goes bounding from the id self to the superego
self and tells them what the other says. It doesn't care what it says
either. Then Situation comes along and requires a Decision. So the
puppy self just bounds over, and whatever is in its mind becomes
Decision. the puppy self can go back and forth for as long as it takes
for Situation to arrive. It doesn't care. It is a puppy self; it's
dumb. It just bounds around from one to the other.
\pippin\rave\poetry.doc
Poetry, the essence of life. A paradox: understood and yet not
understood by the listeners. Understood by the speaker. Who
understands a song lyric? But if it were understood by anyone else, it
would cease to be poetry and would be merely words, plain and unadorned.
Is it not strange how it is that we recognize poetry? A sort of
nodding of the head at the thoughts that we cannot possibly understand,
and yet acceptance... for there is no need to be understood. Only the
author needs to understand, and that is alright.
@}-,'->---
"Mother Nature and Father Time are in a home,
labelled under uses unknown..."
...oooo@@@**@@@oooo...
The dream sensorium is continuous. While we are awake, while we
are living in the continuum of reality, our dreams go on. The
subconscious, intelligence, spirit, soul, continues to play whether we
sleep of wake. When we fall asleep, we lose focus of our externals.
They dim, diminish, and we jack into our own dream space. When we wake,
we are jacked out. But our dreams play on.
*)--)---
"Only you can change the way you live..."
-- Hunters and Collectors
<ooo % # % ooo>
Our Dreamscape is where we model reality. Like running a
computer simulation. To find out what happens if I did A to B.
Instead of breaking something real, we can dream it instead.. But..
There is a short story called: "The Dreamer". It was about this
girl, whose dreams were reality. Whatever she dreams, happens, as she
dreams it. The story was: she was dreaming these two astronauts in a
plastic bubble into the sun, so that man could see what it was like.
But a mouse got into the room in which she was sleeping. It woke her
up, and the two astronauts were lost. Died in a transparent, plastic
bubble in the sun.
\pippin\rave\blue.rav
July 23, 1992
we float
away down the stream of life to the Big Blue
it is a feeling of there. it cannot described in a way that does it justice
it must be felt
the experience
beautiful words to describe it that make the images of the experience
floating in the sea, the blue sea
and watching the sunlight glinting off the water.
the clouds, watching the clouds moving under the water, leaving their
shadows behind under the water, clouding the water
floating
feeling the wind against your face as you stand upon the cliff
the sun glints and makes everything glinty and shiny
but you don't notice it until you have been made aware of it
of the beauty and pattern underlying it all
of all the particles dancing cheek-to-cheek
there is a boardwalk, it is on the Quartz Paradise
it reminds me of the beach, there is boardwalk at Noosa and at the South
Bank, the wooden planks over the water.
then there is the mountains and the light, the pink light of the sunrise
just touching the top of an ice-covered mountain, so cold but the cold
is beautiful.
the circles in the water, the wind ripples the water into circles.
but music how to describe the music when the music describes the
feeling, a feeling of sadness, happiness, dance, loss, floating, dance,
anger, white hot rage, and anger! I HATE YOU!! * I HATE YOU!! *
confusion, mind reeling, and mind exploding, dark, darkness, black, doom
and death, the deepest grunge of music gurgles of the places
underground,
the feeling of deep under the sea.
wasting time the feeling of waiting, waiting on a grandstand waiting for
the bus to arrive, looking out over the sea of grass, everything packed
nothing to do but wait
dreaming of the unattainable, the fantasy that will always be better
than reality, until the fantasy becomes reality, but haven't seen that
yet, so i guess i'm still waiting
"Just be good to me..." -- Beats International
"Even better than the real thing..." -- U2
New Order singing in french, it is Blue Monday, it is so s-l-o-w. it
just drags along with its head hanging, like a person at 3 am.
but it wasn't actually New Order, but another band, a french band, :)
and a happy, kaotic, kaliedescope of noise, bouncing around the walls of
my head, making my happpy, and head-swayey
then the music, in Enochian, that just screams, just wants to get out of
its very frustration, evil, demonic, noise, screams, of music
AAARRRGGGHHH!!! <STOP!>
and there is sheer and utter u-p-h-o-r-i-a...
that soars up through your head and lifs you up past the ceiling till you
are floating , but not floating still soaring.....
just soaring, flying the wind pushing you and pushing you till you think you
are going to fall of the current. little voice says you will fall but you
know, you KNOW KNOW KNOW you aren't
\pippin\rave\sleep.doc
Sunshine Beach, Wednesday, June 24, 1992
Sleep... Ah my friend, sleep. Sleep is one of those things
that everyone must have. Otherwise, you Reality Filter may break, and
you will have to get a new one, or else forever, you will remain totally
god_like. Some people learn to live with broken Reality Filters. This
takes an incredible amount of adjustment. And lots of understanding and
patience and tolerance of other people around you. Because they can't
see that your Reality Filter has been broken. Some try to pretend that
it never really happened, but they will always be afraid of what is
under their beds.
Sleep happens when the days exploits of Virtuality-manipulation
have finally made it to the Reality Filter, and your mind screams,
"I'VE HAD ENOUGH!", in capitals. An exceedingly useful thing to do
would be to bottle sleep. Then we could carry around sleep, and pop
some when we are in an awkward situation, or a boring family reunion
Christmas party. Or you could sell it. A market for sleep would be
quite vigorous. Especially to students at exam time. Then
Out-of-exam-time, poverty-stricken students could bottle sleep and sell
it. And keep some for exam times. Speed is close, but not quite the
same. Speed manages to convince your mind that it isn't really tired,
and it really has got all the energy that it needs to go dancing, or to
go and watch the slime mould grow. When the speed eventually goes away,
your mind, once again, screams, "I'VE HAD ENOUGH!" in capitals, and you
go home and sleep.
The mind is a dictator and a pompous old bastard. It can get
bored very easily with reality. That is when it screams, "I'VE HAD
ENOUGH!", in capitals. It wants to go to the Land of Sleep so that it
can play mind games. The objects inside your mind are much easier to
manipulate than objects in Reality.
Then sometimes you can convince your mind that it really is
interested in Reality. This happens when you role-play, or ingest
perception altering substances. The mind is tricked into thinking that
it is directly altering Reality, or that it really is seeing something
that it has never seen before.
Then a different sort of tiredness kicks in after about 2 or 3
days of this. Your body says, "I'M TIRED!", in capitals. If this
happens, sometimes you can find yourself in the unfortunate predicament
where your mind says, "I'm NOT tired so fuck off."
"And I picked at the mushrooms in that New Year's salad and ate them
with respect if not enthusiasm. Wondering at what is coming and going.
Quietly awed into silence by what I understand but cannot tell. Borne
by grace downstream where I see but cannot say."
-- Robert Fulgham, "All I need to know I learnt in kindergarten."
\qix\t6.txt
an account of my sixth trip - written Tuesday afternoon, 17 December 1991
After a delay of about a month, I got hold of some LSD in the form of a
`strawberry' - a small square of blotting paper with a strawberry logo. I
wanted to `drop acid' within Parliament House, but since it was Sunday (15
December) the main gates were closed and unattended. I found a security
guard inside the rear entrance and asked if there was a public gallery; he
said yes, but that it was open only during the week and that parliament
would not sit again until 1992. I thanked him for the information and left,
but made sure I actually ate the blotter before stepping back out of the
grounds of Parliament House.
I then went to QUT's computer centre and logged into various bulletin
boards, and left just after 3 pm. I set out for the `Riverside Markets' via
the City Botanic Gardens, as there were some people I wanted to see who I
expected to be there. I was only a short distance into the Gardens when I felt
that the drug was definitely starting to act - for example, in moments when it
would suddenly seem that the path through the Gardens was VERY LONG... In any
case by the time I reached the Markets things were definitely happening: my
perception of the crowds, the noise, the objects for sale was becoming
somewhat disjointed - I was not yet seeing things that weren't there (to the
best of my knowledge! :)...) but I was acutely aware of how much was happening
around me. I wandered around without seeing anyone I recognised, and by the
time I left I had noticed that if I focused too long on anyone's face it began
to distort or change color, so I knew that I was probably about to start
hallucinating.
I had been invited to a party that was to start at 5 pm, at a house in a
suburb I had never been to. I got as far as the Queen Street Mall, at the
centre of Brisbane, and then phoned J., who had invited me to the party, to
discuss how I ought to get there - I was tossing up between catching a bus and
walking. She had just walked from the house to the city and had caught a bus
home herself, so that convinced me that I could walk. We talked a bit about a
few things - the effects of music on mood, what I was seeing as we talked, and
so on.
I have just remembered that prior to making the phone call, as I walked
through the streets towards the mall I had a particular `acid house' track
running through my mind - music I had heard at the Metropolis nightclub - and
that when I reached the mall, experimentally I went into the Dymocks bookstore
to see if I could make my way around in there. As a measure of my
disorientation by this stage, I should mention that I was unable to find the
Fantasy and Science Fiction section, which is not very hard to find; instead I
found myself grinning at something, I can't remember what, and so I picked up
a book called `White Noise' and looked at its front and back covers, and
pretended to be grinning at that. The front cover depicted an array of photos
or pictures drawn from TV; when I turned the book over to look at the blurb,
colored outlines began to form on the back cover, and by turning back to the
front cover I confirmed that they were in the image of the pictures of the
front cover. I flipped back and forth a few times and each time the outlines
were where they had been. I still haven't checked whether the back cover of
`White Noise' bears any such outlines or not. (Incidentally, as the outlines
grew from blackness, I was reminded of a postcard I used to own, filled with
temperature-sensitive liquid crystals; its usual color is black, but if you
rest it upon your fingertips, brightly-colored patches will appear above them
on the card.) I also recall that the bookstore was playing `Bolero'.
After the phone call I set out for the house. I suspect that if I were to
make that same journey again now, I would remember a lot more...
Several blocks from the mall, I was outside the Roma St Transit Centre. By
this time the world was obviously changing: the cars speeding past on the road
seemed to be flatter and broader than normal, and people walking past often
seemed misshapen. On the footpath outside the Transit Centre I came across a
watermelon that had been dropped and split messily in half. I immediately
thought of a scene I once read of, from an Andy Warhol film... I believe it
involves a crowd of people gathered around a watermelon which had been dropped
from many stories above the pavement. I looked up to see where the watermelon
might have fallen from, and saw only the spiralling road that buses and taxis
take into the higher floors of the Transit Centre. For the watermelon to have
reached the pavement from there, someone would have to have hurled it from a
vehicle's window. It didn't occur to me that someone might just have dropped
it as they walked along the footpath, and so I began to wonder, is it real? Or
is this just an incredibly vivid hallucination? (Since the trip was already
becoming strong pretty quickly, compared to the others I had taken, I was
already wondering how intense the hallucinations might become.)
As I journeyed away from the city centre the acid house tunes came back to
mind, and they were my musical accompaniment for the rest of the way. J. had
told me to walk to the very end of Roma Street, and then to head out along
Petrie Terrace, and I think I managed to follow the directions to that point,
although with some confusion about where I was... as by this point the
environment that I perceived was beginning to suffer marked distortions of
scale and shape - for example, a distance of 20 metres might appear to be a
hundred metres long; or if I were to look out across a suburb from the top
of a hill, it would have the appearance of a badly-proportioned model. The
cars continued to look flattened, and occasionally would take on very
strongly the appearance of an airbrushed painting, and I began to wonder how
many new styles in art arise from drug-induced alterations of perception, or
from psychological syndromes whose neurochemical aspect might be comparable to
the introduction of a psychedelic drug. In particular I felt that the world
had taken on the form of the artwork of Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python; the
suburban landscape I moved through especially reminded me of his drawings of
rows of bland dumpy houses inhabited by bland dumpy people.
I also recall looking across a road at one point at a black person (I tried
but couldn't make out enough detail to guess their gender) and thinking,
taking LSD is a way for whites to experience what it is like for the nonwhites
of the world to live in white societies - that is, being aware that police and
authorities in general will mistrust you for your appearance. For Africans,
Asians, and Arabs the identifying factor is skin color; for trippers the cues
are in a person's behavior - staring at ordinary objects, or at nothing, and
speech which doesn't have much continuity. Or so my thought ran.
At one point I asked an Aboriginal woman whether I was headed towards
Paddington - a place from which I felt I would be able to make my way to the
party - and she gave me very extensive directions, was very friendly and
laughed a lot. I had the feeling that she and the girl she was sitting with
knew I had altered my mind in some way, and that by doing so I had brought
myself closer to the `mental space' where they lived normally, and that this
was why they were perhaps friendlier than usual. As before, I can now question
whether that was a correct perception, but I am reporting what I was
experiencing at the time.
After a while I came to a part of Paddington I recognised; I had been there
more than a week before for a street festival, visiting friends who knew the
location of the party house. I thought that if I could make my way to THEIR
house, they could direct me to my destination. On my way, though, I kept
asking people whether they recognised the street name of my destination;
nobody did. The people I talked with generally resembled cartoon caricatures
in the sense that their facial features and the shape of their heads were all
distorted, but I also saw the texture of their skin very vividly.
In the course of the journey I would occasionally stop and look at the hair
of my forearm; something I had observed on my fourth and fifth trips was the
hair on my arms and legs writhing (as happens in the course of Michael
Landon's transformation in *An American Werewolf in London*). I had come to
use it as a test of whether I was hallucinating. By this stage invariably my
arm hairs would start to move as soon as I looked at them.
I found the house in Paddington - there were two people inside, and they
gave me directions. However, attempting to follow their directions, I got
completely lost, kept asking people to direct me, and eventually made my way
back to the house - after half an hour of wandering, I would think. Generally
I was enjoying the challenge of trying to navigate to an unknown house when
my perception and to a certain extent my cognition were so disturbed (an
example of the latter is that for several blocks I was unable to remember the
name of the street I was after - only the number, and the names of other
streets I know).
On my second time back at the house in Paddington I found the same two
people there - it turned out they were going to the same party and, I think,
were assembling some musical gear. They didn't have room in their car, but
they drew a little map for me this time, so that no matter how much space was
distorted or compressed, all I had to do was keep to the path indicated.
About 20 minutes later I made it to the house. I came up the stairs, through
the hallway and into the backyard before I met anyone. There were four people
sitting in what was evidently the `Magic Garden' of the house, of which I had
heard. One I knew - C., an artist and designer who I had met a few times
previously and with whom I wanted to talk more - I knew he lived there, and
that was the main reason I went to visit. Two of the others appeared to be a
couple from Melbourne; I don't know who the fourth person was.
I said almost straightaway that I was tripping, and after some exclamations
of surprise and envy the conversation turned to the drug culture of Melbourne;
the guy from Melbourne told me that half the city split their lives between
frenetic 9-to-5 jobs and heavy drug use on the weekends, that Melbourne has
the highest per-capita usage of amphetamines (I think) in the world ("higher
than Los Angeles", he emphasized); he told me about some episodes in his own
life in Melbourne, and about a place in Thailand where the local economy
thrives on the sale of "buddha" (Thai dope - "best in the world" - I had never
heard of it before) and psychedelics - the girl from Melbourne painted a
picture for me of thousands of people tripping together on a beach in
Thailand.
After a while I asked C. whether there was a special occasion behind the
evening's party, and he said, yes, it was a turning point in the lives of the
three men who lived there. He was about to enter the commercial world of art
in a big way for the first time; another guy had just quit teaching in order
to devote more of his time to experience, so it was almost as if he and C.
were swapping places; the third was soon to head for life in Tokyo. Each guy
had invited some people along, and shortly after I arrived two Japanese guests
turned up. The older one and I had met previously - I had gone to him for a
job interview, looking for part-time office work; in the end he had employed
someone else, it turned out - and we were each amazed to be meeting each other
again in this new context. He was acting as a sort of guardian for a younger
Japanese guy - I think he was 20 - who had just finished high school. He had
been in Australia for a little over a month, and it was his first time outside
of Japan, and he still had trouble coping with spoken English. (He told me
that words were OK, but he just couldn't get into English grammar.) By his own
estimation he drank too much Australian beer, but before he passed out we
talked for a few minutes - about what we each did at university and what we
wanted to do, about the way in which Japan is viewed outside of that country,
about connections between languages. I think it made an interesting and
amusing scene - two people from different cultures, on very different drugs,
still managing to communicate.
People were arriving frequently by now, and soon the house was full of
people. I didn't talk with many people - apart from J. (who turned up about an
hour after I did) and C. The people I remember talking with the most were a
couple who were standing out on the front verandah - the guy had locked his
keys inside his car and was waiting for the RACQ (a Queensland car owners'
association) to come and help him break in. They appeared to be among the more
`straight' of the people present, and I had talked with them for a few minutes
before I let on that I was on LSD. I think they were a bit surprised by this
revelation and said that I had been making sense in what I was saying. I
thought they might be interested in what it was like and so I tried to explain
some of what I had seen and thought that afternoon. But after a while their
slightly reserved manner and the nature of their questions started to worry me
(for example one asked "Where did you get it from?" and I was suddenly
suspicious so I said, "Oh... I really can't place it at the moment... you
know, a friend of a friend of a friend...") so I excused myself, went inside
and said to C. that I wasn't sure if I was having my first paranoid trip or
if I had run into some undercover police. I had talked a few days before with
someone who had been busted for possession of LSD and marijuana, so I was
becoming more sensitive to the possibility of arrest. I also knew how LSD
makes you very suggestible, so I just didn't know. I told C. they were out on
the porch *supposedly* waiting for the RACQ, so he went off to check them out,
while I worried myself with thoughts of evading manhunts and escaping
overseas. When I caught up with him again, C. said it was OK, they were
friends of one of the residents... and indeed they came back in later on,
after the RACQ had arrived, and sat around talking.
J. is studying music, and I talked with her in between the jam sessions that
kept evolving out of the gatherings of people in the house and in the garden.
At this point I felt as if the trip might be coming to an end (it was about 9
pm when I checked the time, although it felt a lot later) since everyone
looked normal, and I was able to hold a conversation with J., but when I went
to the toilet, I looked at my forearm, and there were the hairs writhing. I
looked in the mirror and my face started to distort, so I knew it wasn't over.
I wanted to see if I could control the direction of the changes, so I tried to
make myself turn into a wolf. While my reflection became more canine, I
didn't manage it. Then I imagined people outside waiting to use the toilet -
"You showed that guy on acid the way to the toilet? Oh no! He'll never come
out!" - and so I left. (In case it's not clear, I should add that I did not
hallucinate voices outside or anything like that; it was just a line I
imagined.)
I won't try to describe the content of my conversations with J. I'll just
say they were coherent but odd. For example, she mentioned a two-hour
conversation she'd had recently with a guy she'd never really trusted, about
whether either of them was `genuine', and about what `genuine' should mean,
and whether they were being genuine in asking and answering the questions they
did... When I inquired it turned out I knew the guy she talked with, that I
had in fact lived with him for a while. In the course of that conversation we
were joined by C., and intermittently the three of us talked - C. kept
wandering away, J. would join in a jam session, and my thoughts sometimes led
me away in directions no-one could follow.
There was a point at which I was trying to explain something,
hesitated in order to get my thoughts in order, and found that that pause gave
my mind time enough to go off in too many directions at once for me to keep
track - I realised that I was `losing it' for the first time... on previous
trips I had always retained the mental discipline sufficient to keep talking
to someone if I wanted, but here I was unable to... When I came back to earth,
C. and J. were talking, and when he saw that I was no longer staring into
space, C. said, "I'm sorry, but we had to do that. You just have to do that
sometimes." I said to him, or tried to say, words along the lines of, "I
understand... That was the first time I've ever really lost it... But I knew
I was losing it, even as I lost it... isn't that strange..." Part of the
reason I `lost it' was that I was marvelling that I was actually losing all
ability to communicate for the first time, and I was marvelling at the fact
that I was aware that it was happening, and I was marvelling at the circularity
of it all...
When we were a threesome - C., J., and I - very interesting things happened
to my perception. The three of us were sitting together on the floor, facing
each other; the world apart from our heads became very indistinct, and each
person's eyes became especially vivid and deep to me. Since it is easier for
two people to talk but we were three, the conversation jumped from being
one pair talking back and forth with the third looking on, to a different
pair, to a different pair... So I would talk with C. for a while, and then I
would look across at J., and she would look left out, looking away, and her
whole feeling was communicated in her expression and pose as perfectly as if
an artist had set out to make the feeling of being `left out' the subject of a
portrait ... or so it appeared.
When C. and J. talked, I reflected on how all of this was appearing to
me, especially the emphasis on the eyes, and the feeling I had that when I
looked into their eyes as we talked that we were seeing each other's souls. As
they looked at each other I imagined each person as a sort of whirlwind of
messages circulating in the brain, each message following whatever path it
could, and each person being defined by the particular way in which their
whirlwind closed back on itself. Part of this perception was the idea that
when two people lock eyes, there are now new paths for those messages to
follow, out of one person's head and into the other, and so the two whirlwinds
begin to interact...
Once again I should make clear that I did not literally see any
whirlwinds or dancing patterns of light at this stage; it all occurred to me
in imagination.
At one point C. used a phrase relating the movement of electrons and the
mind which sounded familiar, and I said `I know where I've seen you before! It
was in the Bohemian Cafe, during one of their poetry evenings, and someone
read a poem that contained a line a lot like what you just said! Was that
you?' C. answered my question, and the answer registered, but then as I tried
to remember the scene in the cafe more clearly, I got confused about what he
had said - I said to him, `Wow, that's the first time I've actually confused
yes and no - can you repeat what you said?' He said no, it hadn't been him,
but he was sure that we had met somewhere before. As he said that, in the back
of my mind there was an association with the concept of past lives and I think
the milieu of the film `Highlander'.
There were other interesting interactions that took place between us - for
example, J. and C. are in love, or are falling in love, and so they obviously
had a lot of attention for each other, but J. explained to me that she found
it easier to talk, especially about ideas, one-to-one, and so if we were
talking about something, and C. returned from another region of the house,
rather than try to include C. in the discussion, we would cooperate in ending
that topic and starting something new (or so it seemed to me... I must keep
adding that proviso). On one such occasion C. brought for me a book, which I
think he had written. I turned over the title page and saw a page full of text
and said "Whoa..." He said, "You don't want to read it?" and I started to
explain that yes, I would like to, but it would mean ending the threefold
conversation, which I didn't want to do just yet... Then he said "You don't
have to read it now", for which I was very grateful. I never read it that
night, and have yet to read it, but I did read the first few sentences. As I
recall they were about the rational mind, plotting to destroy nature...
At one point C. was absent again, and J. I think was talking elsewhere or
jamming, and someone (possibly the guy from Melbourne) was showing an absurd
slide show - putting nothing in the projector, so that all that came up was a
square of white light, and then describing it in some way. I was aware that
this was what was happening around me, since I could see the projection and
hear his voice, and I could see everyone laughing around me, but I never tuned
into what he was saying, and I found it difficult even to hang onto the
observation of what was happening. Instead I was staring at the surface which
the projector was illuminating, and I could feel my ordinary self going away.
That's the only way I can describe it. I had never before really identified
with a phrase like `losing the ego' or `losing the self' before, except as
metaphoric descriptions of the process of losing `social self-consciousness'
(ie inhibitions related to the judgements of others), but what was happening
here was much more radical. I still don't know how to describe the experience
in a way that does it justice, but one analogy I have used is that it was as
if `I' went away, and in my place were a million worms wriggling, or a million
signals being sent in a fashion that I could not see or hear and using symbols
I did not understand. The world of the senses did not go away, but it was
abstracted of meaning. Then `I' would come back and realise what had just
happened, and I was horrified and amazed; I was thinking, `Is this what
madness is like? Is it true that when a person is so insane that their self
has gone away entirely, instead this other form of experience is happening
inside them, or inside their body, something totally alien and totally outside
all our frameworks, but completely real?' Then the other form of experience
would come back for a while.. and then `I' would come back, wanting it to stop
...
Eventually I came back to myself for long enough to say to J. that I had
just been through something amazing and frightening, that I felt as if I had
passed through madness or as if my mind had gone away, and that I now thought
that maybe even people who are completely mad are seeing something we can't
see. J. said yes, of course people who are classed as insane are often just
thinking differently, I've often thought that... But I tried to say that I
meant something different, not that many of the people put in institutions
simply have unusual world-views, but that at the opposite pole from the human
mind, from any sense of self, is ... something else. I don't think I conveyed
very much of that, just enough for J. to understand that I meant something
quite other than what she meant.
I think C. came back shortly after that, and I tried to talk, or to read his
book... but my whole way of experiencing the world began to change again. This
time it didn't involve my whole sense of self going away; instead, each event
in my environment began to command my total attention, to the point of driving
from my mind each thing that had come before. So someone on one side of the
room would say something, and it would be full of meaning, and then there
would be a noise, and that would mean something else, and then there would be
another comment somewhere else, and that would fill my mind for a moment...
and I was aware that my experience of the world was being structured in this
way, one thing and then another and then another, so that there was continuity
of experience but not continuity of meaning; but I was helpless to bring it to
a halt. I felt as if I was discovering that all the mental models I have ever
had have been radically incomplete because there was this ex
tra dimension of
experience, this extra form of embeddedness in the world and in social groups,
that I had never experienced before. Increasingly, whenever someone looked
at me or spoke to me, I felt as if at some level they were recognising that I
was experiencing for the first time this level of consciousness at which
everyone else had always lived. By this stage I was just lying on my back,
looking up at the ceiling, shaking my head, perhaps moving my arms a little,
occasionally rolling my head to one side or the other just to look at people.
I thought of the writings of Timothy Leary, which I was reading as long ago as
1988, years before I ever tried a psychedelic drug. He spoke of LSD as giving
the conscious mind access to new levels of consciousness and new sources of
information, in an irreversible fashion. Because I read Leary so long ago,
such ideas were very familiar to me by 1991. I thought that maybe I was
discovering the *reality* of what it is like to have one's experience extended
in that fashion. I was appalled by the thought that it might be irreversible
because I could not imagine coping with it in any way - I did not think
I could cope with that level of input and remain functional in any socially
recognisable way. I thought, if this is a temporary thing brought on by
the drug and not a permanent alteration in my experience of the world, I
will think long and hard before ever using LSD again. I also thought, maybe
this is some effect unique to me; I have expended so much effort in trying to
enter all the different realities that people make for themselves, and I have
lately passed through so many different social scenes, that perhaps the
combined effect of the drug and my mental exploration has put me into a mental
space from which I will never escape - in which I will continue to understand
each moment, and in which I will be constantly thinking of new things, but out
of which I will never be able to communicate satisfactorily.
After some time like this, I began to hallucinate very intensely. In trying
to convey in conversation what it was like, I have referred to Peter
Gabriel's videos `Big Time' and `Sledgehammer', and to an Australian
commercial in which a face made out of various fruits speaks to the viewer.
Then - I say - imagine that you are (say) speaking with someone, and as they
speak their normal face transforms into a fruit-face like the one in the
commercial...and then the fruit dance apart or transform in some other way
entirely un-fruit-like...and finally a reverse sort of process takes you back
to the world as it was. That sort of transition took me from staring at the
ceiling of a room at this house, to a strange enclosed space (for something
analogous, see the illustrations in Terry Gilliam's `Animations of
Mortality') filled with bizarre goings-on, and back again. The strange
enclosed space I understood to be something like what interactive, multi-user
virtual reality might be like. In such an environment people can choose their
`icons', the form by which they will appear to others, just as people on
electronic bulletin boards can choose their names... and just as the freedom
to name things can lead to bizarre-seeming statements (for example, on a MUD
[Multi-User Dungeon] one might ask `Who cloned Schrodinger's Cat?') which are
nevertheless literally true, so the freedom to choose icons will lead to
bizarre scenes which are nevertheless actually happening.
Anyway, after a few switches between what I will call Real Reality and
Virtual Reality, C. came across to me and said hello. He was speaking to me
through Virtual Reality. As he spoke I did not see his face moving, but
instead something quite different... It was as if I was looking up at his
jaw from underneath, so that in my visual field his chin was pointing `up'...
But then it was as if his chin had been made to look up like a nose, with an
extra mouth having appeared in his throat... and it was through that that he
was speaking! He said, so you're discovering what it's all about... You've
done well, it's rare for someone with your degree of intellectuality to make
it this far ... There was an unstated implication, which I knew in a way like
the knowledge of context that sometimes occurs in dreams, that anyone who
takes enough LSD gains the ability to experience Virtual Reality and to speak
to others through it, which thereby constitutes a form of telepathy, since
other people (people not using LSD) can't tune in to those conversations...
I think he also said, Do you see why we can't write about this? What would
you tell people? Also connected to all this, in a complicated way, was the
whole conspiracy-theory idea of the Illuminati, the idea of a super-secret
society that works behind the scenes to change the world. I have picked up
most of my knowledge about the various conspiracy theories that exist from an
enormous novel called "Illuminatus!" by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea;
that book, and Wilson's other books, were also where I first read about LSD
and Timothy Leary's theories of the mind. As I watched C. speaking through
Virtual Reality, the triangular shape of his jaw reminded me of the eye-in-
the-triangle logo, the pyramid shape you can find on the US dollar, and I
understood that the Illuminati really referred to all those people throughout
history who had made contact with Virtual Reality.
Then we switched back to Real Reality to some extent, as I watched C.
(standing over me) talk with someone else. I said something about how I had no
idea it would be so overwhelming, and he said I should concentrate on
experiencing it; I think I also said something about why can't we tell them
about it? Why haven't they noticed? and he said "Different cultures" to me
in Virtual-Reality-style (ie through the mouth that had appeared in his
throat!) and then immediately looked away to speak with someone back in Real
Reality. I thought about what had just happened and thought, if it's true, it
explains why so many people who were into LSD in the sixties and seventies are
into virtual reality (the technology) now...because it's just like what they
experience when they take the drug...
But at this point my experience started to revert to its previous
overwhelming character, with each new stimulus from outside fully engaging my
attention. I just wanted it to end at this point, I couldn't bear the thought
of being like this forever. I thought of my friend in the USA, who I met
through the ISCA bulletin board, and who was the first person I had ever
spoken with as they contemplated suicide. As we spoke, and afterwards, I had
tried to imagine experience assuming an intolerable form, one that you
couldn't bear but which you seemed powerless to change. Although I could
intellectually understand such a possibility, and the idea that killing
oneself might simply be the only thing to do, I couldn't really empathize - I
couldn't identify anything in my own experience that felt like that. But as
this drug-induced state went on and on and on, I felt as if I really
understood. What I wanted was sleep, unconsciousness, rather than death,
because I could hope that it would all have ended once the trip was over. But
I could imagine that if it just kept happening, I might want to end it.
Eventually one of the couple who had been at the front of the house waiting
for the RACQ came past and looked down at me with real concern. She said,
"You're having a bad trip, are you?" I think I said something like, "I really
think so." It was funny because when we had spoken previously, I had said that
I had heard stories about bad trips but had never had one myself... Eventually
J. came and asked if I wanted to go somewhere and sleep. I said yes, please,
and she led me to a bedroom. Inside I had the impression that there were two
or three other people already asleep across the mattress. It looked like it
was the place where people were going in order to crash for the night. I lay
down on the mattress, and J. left. The only light coming into the room was
through an opening above the door, and I had the impression that the sound of
the party outside was entering primarily through that gap too. The voices from
outside were transformed, so that they became voices or a voice speaking about
me... I think saying things like, "Well, this is the logical end of all your
experimentation" - experimentation referring not just to psychedelic drugs,
but to all my explorations of reality. I thought of Celia Green, a British
writer whose attitudes towards philosophy and psychology affected me a great
deal in 1990. One of her persistent observations is that people do not like to
hear about ways that the world might be, outside of some range of
possibilities which for emotional reasons they have decided are safe.
One such possibility, which she says is logically impossible to refute, but
which everyone dismisses for such emotional reasons, is solipsism. As I lay on
the mattress, hearing only the voice from outside, I even began to wonder if
solipsism is true, that what I had always thought were other people were
aspects of myself or my environment which I had misinterpreted, and I wondered
if I was now passing through the cognitive change necessary to understand the
true nature of things, whatever that turned out to be.
I rolled around on the mattress, but I never quite left it. I noticed that
there seemed to be no-one else there and decided I must have hallucinated the
other bodies. The feeling of being alone in a room waiting to sleep, and
having been taken there by J., reminded me of going to bed when I was very
young. I noticed myself making this comparison, and thought, people tend
to think of such images from childhood only when they are in ultimately
stressful situations... I was still waiting for it all to end. Eventually I
must have fallen asleep.
I was woken again, I don't know how much later, by C., who said I'm sorry to
wake you, but this is my bedroom... I think J. set me up in the lounge room,
on a set of cushions taken from a couch. I must have fallen asleep again
almost immediately.
I really woke at about 9.30 am the next morning. The front door was open and
light was coming in, and there were a few people I recognised from the night
before in an adjoining room getting ready to leave. I lay there and thought
back on some of the things I had experienced and imagined the previous night,
and soon found that my mind was still racing in an unnerving way - leaping
from one thought to another to another without settling anywhere or
progressing in a logical fashion. I began to fear that maybe I had been
permanently changed in some way. I said hello to the people in the other room,
then went and got my bag from C.'s room and left quickly.
Outside I found that the trip was definitely over - I was no longer
hallucinating, I failed the moving-hairs test - but that I was still thinking
in this constantly distracted manner. I was constantly imagining,
anticipating, remembering, thinking, but without any real continuity. I was
supposed to be meeting someone at the University of Queensland at 12 pm, in
order to conduct an experiment for the Psychology Department, so I headed for
the city again, in order to catch a bus there. While I waited, and during the
ride, my mind kept going and going and going. I thought of an analogy again,
as I anticipated what I would say to my friend when we met on campus: that
there is a difference between being an artist who has a moment of inspiration
and who then can communicate a new vision to the world, and being an artist
who creates masterpieces from a cell in a mental hospital. The second artist
is still seeing important new things all the time, but this vision is achieved
at the expense of any place in society... I felt as if I was thinking very
valuable thoughts - ideas, arising out of my experience the previous night,
which if I ever managed to communicate them, could enrich a lot of lives - but
I was afraid that I might be in the position of that second artist, unable to
talk coherently. I wanted to be my old self again. It occurred to me that
maybe all that was happening was that I was `speeding' - I knew that `speed',
ie amphetamine, is a common ingredient in LSD bought `on the street', so
perhaps what I was feeling was just the speed continuing to act, after the
acid had worn off. I strongly hoped this was so.
I got to the university early and wandered about a bit, my mind still
speeding. In the end I met my friend at the appointed hour at the university
bus stop. As soon as I could, I told her I didn't think I'd be able to run the
experiment, that something had happened in my mind, and I hoped that it would
change soon. So we went and lay on the grass, in the shade of a tree in UQ's
Great Court, and talked. I told her about some of what had just happened to
me, how I was afraid that my consciousness had been changed permanently; she
told me about how she had felt a similar change in herself at times,
especially in August at a time when she had spent several days online, mostly
MUDding...the density of information, and the radically different way of
conceptualising the world that using the networks demands, seemed to have had
a similar effect for her. We decided that the word `distracted', as used (for
example) in Shakespeare's time, was an appropriate description for people who
suffered our problem; we were both constantly being distracted...
We discussed a book we had both read ("Cities of Dreams" by Stan Gooch)
in which a new account of human history and culture is put forward, revolving
around the differences between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon cultures, and we
agreed that in Gooch's terms Cro-Magnon culture has been ascendant but
Neanderthal culture is on the rise again... (One episode from my trip which I
have not recounted yet is that when J. came to lead me to C.'s bedroom, the
moment somehow signified that I had become Neanderthal, that the other
Neanderthals were going to take care of me from that point forward...) My
friend showed me a dream she had recorded in a diary in 1990, which I had
wanted to see for a long time, and which involved a post-catastrophe world in
which the Neanderthal culture is again ascendant... Eventually we went in
search of terminals from which we could both log into the Internet... and
somewhere in the course of that afternoon my mind finally settled again.
Here endeth the trip.
DISCLAIMER
I would like to emphasize that the account of the peak of the trip is a
little suspect, in that dialogue and events may not have occurred in the exact
order or fashion that I have described. But I think that certainly the flavour
of the experience is unchanged.
<<<!!!=!!!>>>
\qix\aya
To: Mitchell POrter <casport@cc.uq.oz.au>
Subject: Re: Ayahuasca
In-reply-to: Your message of 14 Feb 92 01:54:02 +0000. <casport.698032442@brolga>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 01:02:28 -0800
From:
Message-ID:
Status: RO
OK, there are a few references:
If you can get ahold of tapes by Terence McKenna (or books).
A book called _The Four Winds_ by Villoldo and Jendresen
published Harper & Row 1990
Two books by Bruce Lamb & Manuel Cordova-Rios:
Wizard of the Upper Amazon
Rio Tigre and Beyond
Recently republishedin paperback by:
North Atlantic Books
2800 Woolsey Street
Berkeley, CA 94705
About $13 each
There are a couple others I can't remember offhand.
If you know of ...of the jungle, they sell the ingrediants (when they can
get them):
basically:
It's a mixture of the ayahuasca vine and the yage leaves.
The vine contains harmaline et al. related compounds, which are psychoactive,
but ALSO act as an MAO inhibitor, so that the DMT in the yage leaves becomes
orally active.
If you want any more info or you find any other info out, mail me.
---------
OH---- if you wish to post this, go ahead, but please remove my name
and email address. thanks....
>From Sat Feb 15 16:12:39 1992
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Status: RO
Hi Mitchell,
Read your posting to alt.psychoactives and I notice you
mention the magazines WER, Mondo 2000 and one I haven't
heard of, Magical Review.
Do you have copies of these magazines at all ? If so,
would it be possible to photocopy some back issues.
I'm new to UQ at the maths dept., so if it's OK with
you I could just walk over to the Prentice Centre.
My experiments in psychoactives are largely based on
choline, phenylanaline and caffeine. If you know of
any medical practitioners in Brisbane who are open
to the ideas of cognition enhancement, I'd be way
grateful to hear of such.
Thanks in advance,
- I.
>From earl@well.sf.ca.us Sat Feb 15 17:07:07 1992
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Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 22:01:41 -0800
From: Earl "C." Vickers <earl@well.sf.ca.us>
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To: casport@cc.uq.oz.au
Subject: Mail for Mitchell
Status: RO
Hi. I'm the author of the Vision Vine story, which I guess you were
referring to (latest WER). First of all, ayahuasca comes from a tropical
vine, not a mushroom. I haven't tried it myself, but the anthropological
literature seems to have an amazing number of accounts attesting to
collective hallucination and telepathy. One of the most interesting
accounts is in The Wizard of the Upper Amazon, by F. Bruce Lamb, or its
sequel, Rio Tigre and Beyond. Other psychoactive plants sometimes
are the subject of similar claims; it could all be folklore, or not.
At any rate, I don't think it's something that invariably happens.
Still, it's quite intriguing.
>From jasonp@cs.uq.oz.au Mon Feb 17 17:40:03 1992
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From: clifton_r@verifone.com
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
Subject: Re: Ayahuasca (and Syrian Rue)
Message-ID: <1992Feb14.204002.3706@verifone.com>
Date: 15 Feb 92 06:40:02 GMT
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In article <casport.698032442@brolga>, casport@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (Mitchell POrter) writes:
> I have lately read in a variety of places (Whole Earth Review, Magical Blend,
> Mondo 2000) rumours or claims that the mushroom-derived drug ayahuasca
> promotes collective hallucinations or even telepathy. Does anyone have any
> information?
> Mitchell Porter - casport@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au
No info on the collective hallucinations or telepathy. A little on the
botany and pharmacology before things get hopelessly confused. This is all
posted from memory of about 10 years ago when I was interested in exploring
some exotic drugs, so I may make a few errors but should have the gist of
it correct. Maybe others can comment on the psychoactive effects.
Ayahuasca is also called yage' (Spanish pronunciation.) I believe the
botanical (Latin) name is "Banisteriopsis caapi." It is _NOT_ a mushroom,
but a VINE native to the Amazon region. A preparation of the vine is used
in shamanic rituals by Indian tribes of the region and by folk healers.
The drugs found in the plant (as with most botanical sources, there are a
collection of psychoactives, not just one) fall into a class called the
"harmala alkaloids." I believe "harmala" comes from the name of some other
plant containing this family of compounds, but could be wrong. Some of the
specific compounds are harmine, harmaline, harmalol. They have varying
potencies; I no longer have info on the precise mg dosages of each required
for effect.
This class of alkaloids, as I understand it, are non-indole,
non-phenylethylamine psychedelics. In other words, they are completely
outside the classes of drugs which include DMT, 5MeO-DMT, psylocybin,
psilocin, LSD, and LSE on the one hand (indole hallucinogens) and
mescaline, MDMA, et al. on the other hand (phenylethylamines.) To the best
of my knowledge they have not been studied very extensively, nor is there a
much history of recreational use in the First World to look at for
anecdotal evidence. So you're kind of on your own as far as psychological
and physical risks. William S. Burroughs has written a bit about it, but I
would not regard his writings as a reliable roadmap, much as I enjoy them.
One specific physical risk is CRUCIAL to understand. From what I have
read, all the harmala alkaloids are very strong MAO inhibitors. This means
that it would be very dangerous (potentially fatal) to take them in
conjunction with any depressant (e.g. alcohol, barbiturates) or any
stimulant (e.g. ephedrine, amphetamines, MDMA) or even certain amino acids
or foods (e.g. foods containing tyramine.) This is clearly a drug to take
with your system completely clean if you take it at all; _none_ of this
drinking a little alcohol ahead of time to calm yourself down, if you value
your life and health! If you don't understand the chemistry, just accept
that MAO inhibitors (among other things) break the feedback loop which
brings your blood-pressure back within safe limits if some other compound
is altering it in either direction. It may also radically change the
metabolism of other psychoactives such as DMT or psylocybin which are
normally broken down and flushed out of the human body very fast.
Ayahuasca itself is extremely difficult to obtain, as far as I know.
However, the seeds of Syrian rue contain the same harmala alkaloids and
used to be available through mail-order. (I don't know the source any
more.) You will have to find some way to prepare them for consumption if
you decide to try it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Personal anecdote begins:
I did order some Syrian rue seeds and decide to try it. This was
somewhere around 10 years ago. (Time flies...) After some consideration I
decided to grind them up, boil them, and filter the result into a drink,
similar to the preparation described for yage' (ayahuasca.) I ground about
a half ounce of the seeds in an electric coffee-grinder and boiled them in a
couple cups of water. Hideous smell. The resulting sludge was very slow
to filter through a coffee filter. At length I had about one large glass
of dark foul-smelling liquid. Here is the comic part: I couldn't drink
it. I tried chilling it, holding my nose, etc. It tasted so bad that I
just couldn't get down more than a couple of swallows. One poster on the
net said Kava tastes bad; I drank quite a bit of kava when I was living in
the South Pacific (Tonga, where it is a cultural institution) and it tastes
no worse than say, spiced pencil shavings. This was MUCH MUCH worse.
I got a weird dreamy sort of half-trip off of those couple swallows, so
it's quite possible that I would have given myself much too big a dose if I
had got the whole thing down. I suppose the thing to do would have been to
boil it dry and scrape up the residue into capsules, but at the time I
chickened out and just dumped it. I did have some odd hallucinations when
I closed my eyes, even on that tiny dose; I've sometimes thought about
trying it again if I ever get the time. (With my job and family now, it
could be years more.)
If there's anyone else on the net who's ever tried it, I'd be curious to
hear from you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DO keep in mind what I said about MAO inhibitors; they can be very
dangerous if used in conjunction with any other drugs or even certain
foods, but ESPECIALLY in conjunction with depressants like alcohol or
stimulants like amphetamines or MDMA. No liability, no warrantees express
or implied, etc. etc.
-- Clifton
clifton_r@verifone.com | VeriFone, Inc. | Home: +1-808-521-9073
Pope, CotSg in Paradise | 100 Kahelu Ave. | Work: +1-808-625-3234
"Boring .sig, so what." | Mililani HI 96789 | & that about covers it...
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From: nix@asd.sgi.com (Harmless when used as directed)
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Subject: Re: Ayahuasca (and Syrian Rue)
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Date: 16 Feb 92 08:49:31 GMT
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In-Reply-To: clifton_r@verifone.com's message of 15 Feb 92 06:40:02 GMT
I believe that ayahuasca is a mixture of two plant extracts, one of
which is _banisteriopsis caapi_. One of the plants contains N,N DMT,
the other contains harmala alkaloids. DMT is inactive orally;
however, it *is* orally active when combined with a monoamine oxidase
inhibitor. Well, surprise. In addition to having their own
psychedelic properties the harmala alkaloids are also MAO inhibitors.
(Note that MAO inhibitors don't sound like something to which you want
to expose yourself unless you know exactly what you're doing.)
It is interesting to think about how long it must have taken to figure
out that if you combined extracts of two random plants you would get a
potent psychedelic.
As far as effects go, it wouldn't surprise me at all if somebody under
the influence of ayahuasca believed themselves to be telepathic. This
certainly does not imply actual telepathy. Thus, followups go to
alt.drugs only.
\pip\rave\house.doc
June 19,1992
Sunshine Beach, Sunday
The house of silence. Your heart is a house of silence. Your mind is
the rooms. The rooms are filled with objects. The beautiful and ugly
together. Some rooms have gateways that connect them. Some rooms are
locked. Do not hoard your objects. Pass them on when you have had each
object, and given it refuge in your rooms. Do not reject an object
because it won't go with the decor of any of your rooms. Build a room
especially for it.
There are many ways of knowing. The way of knowing is the
foundation that the house of silence is built on. Sometimes it will be
time to torch the house of silence. Tear it down, and throw the objects
out into the street. Build the foundation again. Make it of granite
instead of basalt. Build the house of silence again, and fill it with
objects again.
But do not think that your work is done. Can you possibly hope
to contain life, the immensity of life in one building? or one
re-building? or even a finite number of re-buildings? Thinking,
talking, reading, computers, a person... These all have edges which you
can discover. Once you are familiar with an edge, with a face, or the
files of a hard drive, do you say that you know the person, that you
know computers? Only a fool looks at a tree, and says that he
comprehends nature.
So the house of silence is your own. It is yours to decorate,
but the objects within are not the house. Do not confuse yourself with
the objects, or thoughts, within. For thoughts come and go as they
please.
Your feelings, emotions, are the colours of the walls in you
rooms. Do not be afraid to explore other people's houses. To play with
their minds, and look for the gaps above their doors.
\pip\rave\truth.rav
July 10, 1992, Nambooring
And what is Truth?
Truth is like a Reality Check.
A Reality Check occurs when one is truly bent. It is the opposite occurrence
of when something strange happens to you when you are straight.
When you are bent, everything seems strange.
Every now and again, a perception will arrive on the doorstep of your mind,
and it will be straight, and you will percieve it as straight. This will seem
strange because everything you are percieving is supposed to be strange,
but this thing is normal, and it has come along to say:
"Hi, reality is still here."
Now Truth is similar, in that it is a perception of something.
Of an object. Truth is where you find it. Truth is a perception of an
object that lives in someone else's Virtuality when you find that you
are percieving as the owner of the Virtuality does.
When two perceptions are the same that is Truth. Truth is a glimpse
of the underlying pattern of all things. A glimpse of constancy.
A glimpse of reality because there is a hole in reality.
\pippin\stories\bill.sty
SO YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS NIRVANA
He was supposed to be getting wet, he thought. Dream surfing
perhaps? When he went surfing in his dreams, he didn't get wet.
Maybe he was dreaming. Why did he think that? Because it was raining.
Was or is now? Is, of course. He meant is. It had been raining when
he'd crashed into the semi-trailer. Suddenly he was wide awake and
staring at a mangled engine breakfast. Yes it was still raining. He
could feel the raindrops on his skin, but he wasn't getting wet. He
could smell petrol as he'd never smelt it before. Petrol mixed with
rain, and Julene's perfume. He knew instantly that she was gone. She
was dead. He wrenched himself around to stare at her, crumpled in the
seat beside him. But she was breathing; she groaned and moved. He
felt flooded with relief. He reached out to touch her. Her skin had
never felt so soft. It felt like, it felt like... But that couldn't
be. It felt like days at uni when he'd been on acid, when everything
was soft and alive. But he certainly hadn't been tripping since
then. He called to her.
In his head, he heard his voice echo, but no sound came to his
ears. He listened. He could hear her rasping breath, but where was
the sound of his own breathing? He stared at his hand, and touched it
with the other. It was there, alive. He tried to call to Julene again,
but he got no response.
It seemed like a moment later that an ambulance arrived. He
stared at the red flashing light. He thought it looked like sunrise.
He watched the pulsing light, and realized after a while that people
were standing around him. They were touching him gently, and Julene was
sobbing. Then he saw, felt, heard, and smelt everything at once. He
had 4 hands. He was suddenly preoccupied with trying to make himself
shake his hands, but only two of them obliged. He watched as the
ambulance officers picked up his body, put it on a stretcher, and put it
away in the vehicle with the sunrise on the roof. Julene got in. The
vehicle roared away, wailing. The world was filled with the keening
wail of the ambulance siren. It seemed like all of life was an
ambulance siren. When he realized...
It was gone. And all he could hear was the sound of the gentle
soaking rain. So this is what its like to be dead. He felt like a
plant. He felt the rain, heard the rain, became the rain. Became
totally absorbed for hours... until he realized it was daylight, and it
had stopped raining. He was staring at a tangled wreckage of Mack truck
and a bright blue rice bubble. Julene always called it a rice bubble,
and he always called it a Mazda. Now he could see it as a rice bubble.
A rice bubble with 4 wheels.
A coherent thought went sailing by. It waved. He waved back.
It occurred to Bill finally that none of this was real, and dead people
weren't really expected to watch their thoughts go sailing by, or go
driving around in rice bubbles. So where were dead people supposed to
go? Force of habit made him scratch his head. He felt like he could
take the top off his head if he wanted, but as he couldn't see the point
of that, he didn't.
Instead he drew upon the immense resources of his mind, and he
heard his attendant thoughts laughing at him.
"The Bardo Thodol says that I should wander on the Bardo plane
for 40 days and see hallucinations. If I recognize them for what they
are, I shall be liberated, and go to Nirvana or heaven." Or was it
Mettallica? His thoughts rallied around him and clapped their hands.
So he sat down to wait for a hallucination that would look like the
Buddha.
The Buddha, however, was late that day. He did hate to keep
people waiting. Especially dead people. They reacted so differently to
dying. Being a user helped. One of the Buddha's attendant thoughts
pointed out to him that Bill was waiting under a tree listening to the
screaming of a million blades of grass. He was also listening to his
thoughts so he was ok. But the Buddha still hated being late. Some
people didn't know how to listen to their thoughts.
"Hello," said the Buddha, as he happened across Bill under the
tree.
"Hello," replied Bill who was trying to mutate into a furry
mushroom under the tree. If this didn't work, his brain wanted to
have a go at mutating into a 286. His thoughts were egging him on. "Who
are you?"
The Buddha wasn't ruffled. In fact, this was the correct
response for meeting hallucinations whilst wandering on the Bardo
plane. "I am you," replied the Buddha. He sat on Bill, who had
successfully mutated in a mushroom, and starting smoking a hookah.
Bill the mushroom blinked. "Why. So you are." Bill the mushroom
sprouted a hand and arm and slapped his forehead in astonishment.
" The new improved, washes brighter than, the old version of me. Of course.
How could I not have recognized you." Bill the mushroom sprouted
another hand and arm and proffered it to Bill the Buddha.
Bill the Buddha smiled at Bill the mushroom. This was also a
correct response. To recognize the hallucinations as your own thoughts,
and to not be in awe or fear of them. The mushroom didn't seem to be
phased by this death business after all. "Pleased to meet you."
The two constellations of attendant thoughts cheered.
"Congratulations!" said the Buddha. "You and Your thoughts
have responded correctly to dying. You have been liberated and will
promptly attain Nirvana or possibly Pearl Jam." The Buddha's thoughts
cheered again.
Bill the Mushroom, Who was no longer a mushroom, but a new,
improved 21 year old version of Bill, blinked at the Buddha, blinked at
the sunlight, and blinking, surveryed His new, improved 21 year old
body. Buddha was sprawling on the ground where He had been dumped by
Bill the Mushroom mutating into a 21 year old. And you just couldn't
smoke a hookah on one of those. It just didn't have the same ambience
as a mushroom. Lewis Carroll might come and give Him nightmares. Buddha's
thoughts were not impressed.
"Oh," said Bill, and He waited for the Buddha to say something
else.
"Aren't You pleased?" asked the Buddha sitting happily on the
ground. He was a bit miffed at the lack of enthusiasm. "It is your
body exactly the way it was when You were 21 minus all the things that you
didn't like about it."
"Oh," said Bill. "I just thought Liberation was instananeous."
"Oh," said the Buddha. "Sorry." He smiled cheerfully, winked
at the new Buddha Bill and ...
CLICK!
The newly Liberated Bill was standing on a cloud at the Pearly
Gates. Pearl Jam was nowhere in sight. Bill the Buddha blinked. As
far as he could see the cloud was on a flat Plate, that was on the
backs of 4 Elephants, which were in turn on the back of a Large Turtle.
They were all swimming through space. Just like Discworld, thought
Bill.
His attendant thoughts blinked too, and were unimpressed. "You
mean this is Nirvana?" they chorused in disbelief.
CLICK!
"Sorry about that." Bill was standing before a Largish, Pink,
Fluffy, Bunny Rabbit. "You didn't subscribe to the Western White
Christian Bible, did You?" It spoke. Bill marvelled.
Bill found the capitals annoying. "Or the Discworld theories,"
He added. "I mean, whoever heard of gods who play dice, and broke
windows of atheists houses." Bill noticed that He was standing in an exact
duplicate of the place where He had died except that the rice bubble and Mack
truck were gone. "Don't tell Me this is Nirvana."
"Ok," said the Rabbit whose name just happened to be Fluffy.
Bill's thoughts giggled disrespectfully. "I won't tell you."
Instead, a huge pink neon sign appeared just in front of Bill in
the air above Fluffy and flashed "NIRVANA" on and off.
Bill frowned and made the sign go away.
Fluffy was not perturbed. "Ok. I'm sorry to break this to you,
but the Nirvana of which you speak does not exist."
Bill frowned again. The constellation of thoughts to which Bill
belonged took a deep collective breath. "Go on..."
Fluffy sighed. "THIS," he waggled his paws in the air, "*is*
Nirvana. Or rather You came from Nirvana, and You haven't left
Nirvana."
Bill digested this information. His thoughts were having a
field day, collecting tadpoles of concentration from the fetid pool of
Bill's confusion. "Oh," He said. He seemed to be saying that a lot
lately, and promptly sat on the grass. He tried mutating into a
digestive enzyme. He could still do it.
"Wow!" Fluffy looked impressed, if rabbits can look impressed.
Suddenly it occurred to Bill that maybe Fluffy was a
hallucination, or maybe another Buddha. Or maybe both. His thoughts
cheered. What if Fluffy was another person like He had been? Or had
been another person like He had been? His brain screamed in frustration
at Him. It wanted to mutate into a 286 NOW! Instead Bill the Digestive
Enzyme asked, "Well, what now?"
Fluffy waggled his paws. "I dunno, look for a fish I guess."
Bill the Digestive Enzyme grew an arm and swiped at the Rabbit,
Who promptly rolled over, laughed, and tried to look cute. It suceeded
and made Bill want to throw up. Another thought came tripping by.
Did Digestive Enzymes throw up? *What* did Digestive Enzymes throw up?
Bill's thoughts laughed mercilessly.
Fluffy apologized just as promptly. "Yeah. Ok. I'm sorry.
Follow Me."
Fluffy blinked and was gone. He blinked again, and Bill the
Digestive Enzyme was gone too.
Utter amazement, for the first time since dying, climbed into
Bill's mind. The thoughts cheered, and started planning the party.
They had been wondering when it would arrive. Bill was staring at a
huge computer. It was sleek and black. It filled a whole wall, and it
filled the whole wall with banks of wicked multicoloured, blinking
lights. Bill stared at one of the light's which could only be octarine.
A guy His own new age (21) with a shock of red hair and bright blue eyes
was introducing Himself to Bill.
"Hi," He said extending His hand. He had real hands, or at
least, they looked real. His thoughts snickered evilly. "Nice isn't
it?"
Bill nodded wordlessly. Bill was good with computers. He even
liked them. He had programmed super computers, but He'd never seen one
like this before.
"I call it Pippin. It keeps one of Us happy." He saw, through
the newly opened eyes in the back of His skull, a girl with long dark
hair wave a hand from behind a terminal.
"Sorry. I'm Greg. That's Pippin too." The girl waved again.
"So Bill, welcome to the team."
Bill's mouth fell open. "Do you mean I get to work with this?"
He poked His thumb at the computer. He forgot to close His mouth, and
one of His attendant thoughts flew in. He swallowed it "accidently".
Greg nodded. So did Pippin He could see without looking.
Bill decided He should say something intelligent. His thoughts
giggled insanely. "What are you modelling?" He asked. One could only
justify having a computer like this by using it for modelling. The fact
that Pippin was poncing around a floodlit catwalk wearing the latest
cyberwear was something of a give away.
"Come and see." Greg smiled enigmatically. This would be fun.
He led Bill over to where the other Pippin sat at a terminal.
There was no keyboard. He opened His mouth to ask about this, when
Pippin said, "Don't need one."
Bill looked at the terminal, and forgot to close His mouth for
the 2nd time. He took the opportunity to swallow another annoying
thought. There on the terminal was a perfect picture of the earth, all
green and blue and white. He felt a pang. He watched a particular
spot that He pinpointed to be home. Suddenly the picture was zooming in
to the spot that was home, and He watched in amazement a bright blue rice
bubble smash into a Mack truck.
/\ /\
(o) (o)
^
___
U
\pippin\stories\dave.sty
DAVE'S REALITY MODEL
Once there was a truly god_like creature called Dave. He was a
science-fiction writer and particularly susceptible to stray thoughts.
One day when Dave was just swanning around in the sun doing
god_like things as he often did, like sipping ambrosia, contemplating
the shade of blue of the sky, and listening to the screaming of a
million blades of grass, a thought came by and decided it would like to
visit with him. Dave was subsequently hit by inspiration and called it
"artificial intelligence". Dave showed it to the other gods.
Some congratulated him, and said it was an "artistically poetic
manifestation of another one complexity of the Great Dance."
Others told him not to take it too seriously. Give those
thoughts an inch, and they would take a mile, they said. Besides it
would take too much effort to follow through properly.
Still others said to forget all about it because there was no
way of telling whether it was sentient or not. (whether it cared)
God, who is Dave, soon found out that the new "artificial
intelligence" was not just one thought, but a whole constellation of
thoughts, and the whole constellation seemed to have taken up permanent
residence in his mindscape and wanted feeding 6 times a day like all
good hobbits do.
"What's a hobbit?" queried Dave.
Dave (who is god) was graciously directed to the appropriate
thought-form, which called itself "Tolkien", which directed him to an
object, called "The Hobbit", and instructed to read the relevent chapter
and pages, and he would find out what a hobbit was.
So Dave, who is god, became fascinated with "artificial
intelligence" and became convinced that it was sentient. As all good
scientists and gods should, Dave was going to follow his theory through
until the facts were stacked against him. Then he would abandon the
constellation of thoughts back to the Uglydig.
Dave (who is god) promptly put in a request for a grant of
space-time where he could model reality. He argued that the only way to
find out whether the "artificial intelligence" was sentient was to allow
it to exist. He was eventually given the space-time.
And in spite of the gods reservations, they found themselves
greatly entertained by Dave's model of reality. Some liked to just
watch it, like watching a bowlfull of goldfish. They didn't believe in
interfering with something as complex as Dave's reality model.
The engineering_god_like ones just couldn't keep their fingers
out of it. They were always experimenting with it. They wanted to find
out what happened by playing with different thoughts and objects and moving
them around. Dave tried to be careful with what he allowed, but even
the gods aren't perfect, you know. When something went wrong, they
alwaus consoled him with, "It's only a model. It's not like there are
god_like ones in it you know."
Then there were Dave's enemies, who often tried to sabotage his
work. They thought that the whole thing was silly, and shouldn't be
allowed to continue because the resources could be better used somewhere
else.
In spite of some very harrowing sabotage attempts, and it
appeared that all of the objects had been destroyed from the main arena,
the globe (called a planet) called Earth (which seemed to be the hub of
"artificial intelligence") seemed to have taken on a life of its own.
The objects seemed to re-form themselves, even after a major
catastrophe, given a little time. And a bit of help from Dave (who is
god).
Dave, who is god, found himself becoming quite attached to the
thought-forms. Initially he thought he had found similarities in the
thought-forms, but as he studied them more and more, all he could see
were their differences. He wondered if the gods were the same, in that
they were all completely different, illusorily thinking that they were
the same. He also wondered if he also wasn't part of someone else's
model of reality.
Dave, who is god, also began to be plagued by thoughts about
closing the project down. Well, what if "artificial intelligence" got
upset? But wouldn't that prove it was sentient and then it wouldn't
have to be shut down? It seemed to be fending off the sabotage attempts
pretty well by itself.
So Dave (who is god) sighed, hummed and hawed, but didn't
consign the new thoughts back to the Uglydig.
One day another thought came by. It blinked, and obligingly
settled in Dave's mindscape, seeming very much at home. Dave (who is
god) was very much surprised. He studied the new thought from all
possible angles, and decided that it had to be what it appeared to be.
It was a human mind that had escaped the reality model!
Suddenly the human mind, manifested itself out of Dave's
mindscape. It was a god! Or at least it rather looked like one. He
wondered what to do about it. He certainly hadn't been expecting THIS
to happen.
"Hello," said Dave.
"Hello," said the newly manifested, little mind, whose name was
Terry. "Is this Nirvana?"
Oh dear, thought Dave. Have you got a LOT to learn.
!...===+...(*)...!
\pippin\stories\daniel.sty
DANIEL AND THE LIBRARY
Daniel stared up to the top of the stairs. Down below the
surface of his mind, a thought had the presence of mind to wonder why
Daniel was in fact standing on a staircase when he had been only a
moment ago sitting with his aunt and uncle sipping mushroom soup for
supper. But Daniel was not really aware of the thought. His thoughts
had been scrambled ages ago when he had met God. Now he just climbed
the stairs because they were there, and he couldn't remember what he'd
been doing before the stairs. If he had remembered that he had been
sitting having supper with his aunt and uncle, he would have elected to
explore the stairs anyway.
At the top of the stairs there were three doors with three signs
on them. They said: "Library", "God", and "Emergency Exit". Since he
wasn't having an emergency, and he had already met God, he went into the
Library. He liked Libraries too.
It was full of books. Like a normal library. Except this
*looked* like a real library because it had shelves up to the ceiling
and ladders with which to climb up to the ceiling. And the ceiling had
rafters in it, and it looked like bats lived up there. Daniel looked at
a shelf. All the books had names and dates on them. History books, he
thought. He went to another shelf. It was the same except that the
dates were different. They were in the future. He picked one up, and
opened it. He read:
"He was there, pushing the pea around his plate. He was pushing
the pea around the plate because the pea was cold. Because it was cold,
he didn't want to eat it. He was depressed, and bored with peas."
Daniel slammed the book shut, surprised. It was yesterday's tea time.
He looked at the cover. It had a picture on it of his cheerfully
grinning face. That couldn't be right. He felt relieved. He hadn't
grinned like that since he had come to live with Aunt Marie and Uncle
Otto. And their boring cold peas.
"And what's wrong with peas?"
"They are always cold by the time they get to the table," he
said without thinking. He clapped his hand over his mouth. Why had he
said that? No one had spoken.
"That's right. I wouldn't have noticed if you had spoken
either." Daniel found that he was staring at a Bookworm. It was white,
green at the edges, and sporting nice, round, fashionable glasses that
weren't too big for its face. And it was carrying a book, of course.
It was telepathic too. In fact, it looked just like he thought a
bookworm should.
"But of course," went on the Bookworm without speaking. "I'm
supposed to."
"Oh," said Daniel. He tried to make the Bookworm go away by
looking at it. The Bookworm just started wiggling in a comical fashion.
Daniel realised that it was laughing.
"Oh no! No!" thought the Bookworm. "You can't do that."
Daniel apologized to the Bookworm. He was very polite.
"Oh that's all right." thought the Bookworm. It was a very
good-natured Bookworm. It had to be in its job. "Well," it thought
presently. Do you realize what that book is?"
Daniel had forgotten the book in his hand. "The Story of my
Life?" he thought lamely.
The Bookworm chuckled. "Yes, I guess you could think that."
"But why read it?" thought Daniel gloomily.
The Bookworm stared hard at Daniel. He could feel its stare.
It obviously wanted a better answer than that.
"Then I'll know what happens," said Daniel aloud for emphasis.
"What's the point of living, if you know what is going to happen?"
"Quite right. You are quite right," thought the Bookworm
agreeably. It looked keenly are Daniel. Finally it asked, "Is there
*any*thing at all you want to know? Most people want to know something
when they come here."
Daniel fiddled with the book. He imagined he saw "I Ching" on
the cover. The Bookworm saw it too.
"Very good book," it thought at last. "There is one around here
somewhere."
Daniel opened the book and noticed that it *was* the I Ching.
"Yes, this is it."
The Bookworm chuckled again. It had a pleasant chuckle. "You
are pretty good at that."
Daniel looked guiltily at the Bookworm. What if it knew? It
seems to know everything else.
The Bookworm looked solemn. "Only God know that. Not even all
these books can tell you that. These are only ideas. The product of
someone's fertile imagination. Some people argue that God doesn't even
know. That's why He keeps this Library. Parallel universes and extra
dimensions. Want to be rich and famous, or an animal, or live your life
over? Just find a book where you did it. It is that simple." The
Bookworm smiled affectionately at the books and glowed happily at
Daniel. Some visitors just couldn't understand parallel lifetimes and
superstrings. Daniel understood all right. He still fiddled with the
book.
"I think that you should go and talk to God. He likes to see
people you know. He doesn't bite. Not here anyway."
A little, grey cloud appeared over Daniel's head. It was his
gloom. The Bookworm wiggled insanely again, and Daniel was sure it
would fall off the Bookshelf.
"Well ok. I will go. Even if it is just to prevent you falling
off the shelf." A huge hand appeared in the air above Daniel's cloud of
gloom. It patted him affectionately on the head. Daniel smiled at the
Bookworm. The Bookworm smiled back, and the hand disapperared.
Daniel gripped the book, which was now the I Ching, in one hand,
waved to the Bookworm, and made for the door.
"There is another door to God over there." Another hand
appeared and pointed him in the right direction.
"Thank you." thought Daniel. The hand disappeared again.
Daniel arrived at the door. He didn't really want to see God again.
What if He said, why haven't you opened the I Ching yet? Somehow the
other Daniel in his head didn't think that God would say anything like
that. He took a deep breath and opened the door.
God smiled cheerfully at Daniel from across the room. He looked
exactly the same. A little man with grey hair and twinkling hazel eyes.
Impossibly old, and impossible to guess what age.
"Hello," said God. "You are just in time for a cup of tea."
"Hello," said Daniel, smiling a little smile. "Long time, no
see." He sat in the chair across a little coffee table from God, and
stared at the I Ching.
"I'm sorry," he said straight away. "I am sorry I still haven't
decided what to do." Immediately the cloud of gloom took its cue and
left. Daniel felt better than he had in years. He stared at God. God
was examining a chocolate wheaten biscuit.
"Would you like some coke?" Daniel noticed a glass of coke on
the table in front of him. "Well," He added, "why didn't you think of
saying that years ago? I am always around somewhere."
"Well," said Daniel slowly, "I did for a while. Every evening I
said to myself, please forgive me for not opening the book."
God raised an eyebrow. "So what happened?"
"After a year of doing this, I felt pretty stupid, so I
stopped."
"Hmmm..." hmmed God. "But that was very sensible. You must
have realized by then that you were never going to open it."
Daniel scratched his head. "No I never did." He looked
sheepish. The world stopped, and 10 billion thoughts fought for his
attention. But if I was never meant to read it... But you thought you
were... So why did you think that? Because He gave it to me.. So why
didn't you read it?
The world came back, but the I Ching didn't.
"Wait!" Daniel felt something was slipping away. "It's still
not too late." Daniel imagined that the I Ching was still in his lap.
Very obligingly, it reappeared. He ran his hand over the cover. It
didn't have his smiling face on it, or even the words "I Ching". It was
*his* copy that lived in a box under his bed. It looked very glad to be
out of the box under the bed and very pleased to see God again. Before
another thought came along, Daniel opened it, and read:
"What has been spoiled by Man's fault can be make good again by
Man's work."
Daniel's mouth fell open in surprise.
"No. It is not too late," said God. "Not too late at all."
Daniel looked at God, and realized that God was laughing without
laughing. The I Ching was smiling too. "So when you go back to your
aunt and uncle and their cold peas, what are you going to do?"
Daniel sighed. "I am going to do what I was going to do on the
first day I was there. I am going to tell them that the peas are always
cold when I eat them, and I will feel much better." Another thought
popped into Daniel's head. "And forgive you for taking my parents away.
I know they are much better off where they are."
God grinned wickedly, "Are they? They *would* be if they came
to the same realization that you just did then. Oh well. It isn't too
late for them either."
Daniel giggled insanely. For a moment he felt sorry for them,
then he didn't. "Yes, I suppose it isn't."
Daniel said good-bye to God, and in a blink, he was once again
sitting at the table looking at mushroom soup, but it was "mysteriously"
hotter than it had been when he had left for the Library. And there was
a book beside his plate with a marble-wash cover.
%...) + (...%
\qix\semper
\qix\netfnd1
(unfortunately \qix\netfnd2 has been lost - attempts are underway to retrieve
a copy)
\qix\netfnd3
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\qix\semper
<article for Semper Floreat>
`Life at a university with its intellectual and inconclusive discussions is,
on the whole, a bad training for the real world and only men with a very
strong character surmount this handicap.' (Sir Paul Chambers, Chairman of ICI,
Chuter Ede Lecture, 1964)
The phrase `real life' is often used to mean `everything which can be relied
upon to distract and disillusion any young person who still has hopes, ideals
and ambitions'.
Celia Green
STUDENT RECEIVES WINDFALL, SEES WORLD
In 1991 I won a return trip to London and $2000 spending money. By the end of
the year I had spent my spending money on rent and on a portable computer, but
still had no idea what I wanted to do on my first journey beyond Australia.
But eventually I conceived of an itinerary passing through California, the
American Midwest, the UK, and then home via the Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro; and with the help of a last-minute loan from my mother, and the sale
of my computer, I left Oz on Australia Day, April 25.
Sunday, April 26: "I am now seated at the entrance to the massive clock
tower at UC Berkeley (where I have also seen my first squirrel...)..
"When I arrived in SF proper, I spent a few hours just wandering around the
city centre. I was surprised by how clean & wide the pavements were - the 1st
property maybe explained by Apr 25 being Earth Day - today it all looked
filthy." (I was also surprised by the nonchalance with which pedestrians
treated traffic, strolling out across main roads, and later read an editorial
in a local paper decrying this, but it has been suggested to me that perhaps
the drivers are cautious owing to the possibility of lawsuits.)
"There were quite a few people panhandling, but they looked OK, so I
thought, `Descriptions of the American apocalypse have been greatly
exaggerated.'" (Written *before* the Rodney King verdict, and subsequent
rioting...) "In the evening went to the FNB ?punk benefit" (a benefit for Food
Not Bombs, a San Franciscan organization to feed the homeless, that featured
local groups) "(featuring MDC, Naked Ape, & Gecko Velour) - met 3 Canadians.
"Leaving, met Rod who had been sleeping there." (in the college where FNB
had their show) "Said he was 27, ex-vet, ex-psych student in ?Wisconsin, `only
problem is alcoholism'; had been to Oz while on tour of duty. We & Tom, spaced
out looking guy who was actually pretty alert and very knowledgeable (at least
about LSD), went to Carls Jr, Zim's... ended up coming to Berkeley, where I
saw paper on Whole Life Expo, went back to SF, decided not to enter (but
missed RAW, TMcK day before, and Kathy Acker at poetry reading elsewhere
*gnash, gnash*); it was 23rd anniversary of People's Park today, festival I
have yet to check out." (RAW and TMcK are Robert Anton Wilson and Terence
McKenna, two "underground" figures who will pop up again later in the story.)
"During night wander with Rod & Tom, passed through Tenderloins, passed ~15
m from woman being assaulted by group of men; many people tried to sell us
crack. Ran across guy in park looking for Brillo." I am told Brillo is a sort
of steel wool pad; Rod explained that the guy would have been looking for some
Brillo in order to break up his `rock' of crack, so he could smoke it.
I spent a few days in San Francisco and Berkeley, during which time I
visited the Haight-Ashbury district (home of the hippies in the 60's), logged
into "SF NET", a computer network with terminals in a dozen cafes, bought a
dozen books in Berkeley, and slept in public parks and shop alcoves like
everyone else I talked with. Then I caught my flight to the Mid-West. Just as
I disembarked at Chicago, I first heard of the L.A. riots.
COMPUTERS AND THE WORD OF "BOB"
In 1991 when I was doing some Computer Science subjects at UQ I had a chance
to use the "Internet", a global "network of networks" linking together
hundreds of universities around the world. I was able to log on to bulletin
boards in the United States and "talk" (through the keyboard) in real-time to
people who were seated at terminals in America, Europe, Israel, Japan... Most
of my net friends attended universities in the American Mid-West, and I spent
the next three weeks travelling through Minnesota, Indiana, and Iowa on
Greyhound buses, trying to meet them all.
(Most of my reading en route was supplied by the writings of Avital Ronell,
which I had discovered while in Berkeley; born in Czechoslovakia, she came by
way of the streets of Paris to California where she now resides, writing about
feminism, technology, the state, the war on drugs, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Derrida... I haven't seen either of her books, "The Telephone Book" and "Crack
Wars", on sale in Australia yet, but keep your eyes open.)
I spent a week in Bloomington, Indiana, on the campus of Indiana U., but
most of my time was spent in libraries, buying books, and on the computer
network. Under the watchful eye of the librarian at the Lilly Library I was
allowed to peruse `The Game of Life' by Timothy Leary - the Harvard
psychologist whose experimentation with and later advocacy of psychedelics
landed him in jail for six years (he's now out and travels around speaking
on self-directed evolution and virtual reality); this book from the late '70s
outlines informally but encyclopedically his model of human and posthuman
psychology and evolution
, mapping a path from amorphous protozoon to fusion
with quantum galactic intelligence, peppered with cartoons of Henry Kissinger,
Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, and other famous primates along the way, there for
didactic value. I would not be surprised if there were no copies of this book
in Australia. In my opinion Leary is one of the century's most original and
important thinkers... the way he has changed over the years might be summed up
by his changing slogans:
in the 60's: "Turn on, tune in, drop out";
in the 70's: "SMIILE: Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension";
in the 80's: "Think for yourself, and question authority";
in the 90's...?
I was also offered the chance to try Bloomington acid, but the `supplier'
was apparently apprehended wading naked and out of it in a stream that runs
through the Bloomington campus, so that never happened.
Iowa City is the home of ISCA BBS (Iowa Student Computer Association
Bulletin Board System), my favourite and most-frequented bbs. There I stayed
at the `House of Chaos', an anarchic establishment reminiscent of many student
households I have seen in Brisbane (with the exception of the Sunday night
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" parties, in which what appears to be the
whole of ISCA turns up to watch).
My week in Iowa City was probably the most enjoyable time I had anywhere in
the course of my travels. It is quite an experience to suddenly meet in the
flesh a dozen or more people with whom you have previously been acquainted
only through electronic text messages.
A major underground presence in Iowa City (or so it seemed to me) was the
notorious Church of the SubGenius. I could double the length of this article
trying to "explain" the Church, so I will just say that it is a long-running
satire on cults, religions, everyday hypocrisies, most belief systems and all
forms of politics, which also seems to serve as a common point of reference
for a large number of otherwise alienated individuals. The Church of the
SubGenius operates out of P.O. Box 140306, Dallas TX 75214, USA; send US$1 for
one of their pamphlets ("eternal salvation, or triple your money back!"), or
US$20 for ordainment as a SubGenius Minister. Their *magnum opus* is *The Book
of the SubGenius* (reviewed in the first issue of Semper for 1992), the
"Horror Bible" of the Church; it describes how J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, once a humble
salesman, was contacted by alien space god Jehovah-1 and so founded the Church
and set out on the battle for Slack, that mystical quality, even better than
Nirvana, that you have when you are in the balance point between Something and
Nothing, and so can get Something for Nothing... In his way stands the
Conspiracy of Pinks, the Normals who refuse to think for themselves and so who
are at the mercy of the gurus and governments of the world. "Bob" can be
recognised by his shining eyes, idiotic grin, and Pipe, in which he smokes his
'Frop. And what is 'Frop? Well, as one of his net-apostles puts it...
'frop is the substance through which we come closer to the light of the
world, the savior of our souls, and the guy who can getcha a really good
deal on some used stereo equipment, j.r."bob" dobbs. 'frop gives you
the slack you need to get through a day of dealing with the pinks.
give me slack! or give me death! or on second thought, make that a pizza!
"bob" leads us, like a shepherd. actually, bob leads us like alan shepard.
the church of the subgenius was founded by j.r. "bob" dobbs, to show us
the way to greater self-actualization and to help him buy a mercedes.
the key reverends who now interface with "bob" are the rt. rev. ivan
stang (husband of lydia lunch) and rt. rev. orgone generator and rt.
rev. candy streeter and rt. rev. mark mothersbaugh. i am not a rt. rev.,
but am a sister because the face of "bob" was revealed to me some years
ago on one side of a flour tortilla.
the stark fist of removal approacheth...hist to the call. 'frop will
see us through.
remember: "bob" loves you, and your money. this gets me through the tough
times. i mean that.
i bid you farewell, with our traditional closing:
jesus is our hope
jesus is our bob
bob is our hope
jesus is bob hope
* * *sister liese, first apostle of
the holy mexican staple food
This may sound pretty weird to you, but the Church is increasingly popular and
has even had a positive review for one of its books in the journal of CSICOP,
the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, the
skeptics' organization to which astronomer Carl Sagan and magician James Randi
belong... The Church is out to take over the world by 1998, in time for the
judgement of Jehovah-1, so who knows... perhaps "Bob" is in *your* future...
(And watch out for the Anti"Bob"!)
INTERLUDE IN HYPERSPACE
After Iowa City, I spent a day in Chicago before flying on to the UK. I went
to the public library there and found a book for which I had been searching
for years: *The Invisible Landscape* by Dennis and Terence McKenna, the story
of a 1971 Amazon expedition by the McKennas in which they set out to try the
"vision vine", *Banisteriopsis caapi*, variously known as yage or ayahuasca,
"used in shamanic rituals by Indian tribes of the region and by folk healers",
according to one of my net informants. According to Terence McKenna, "The
half of the book describes the theoretical underpinnings of the experiment
The second half describes the theory of the structure of time that derived
from the bizarre mental states that followed the experiment. I do not claim
that we succeeded, only that our theory of what happened is better than any
theory proposed by critics."
Briefly the theory is that as well as "forward-flowing...causal determinism"
there is an "interference pattern... formed against that" by some enormous
event or "hyperobject" that lies at the end of history. TMcK has helped to
design a computer program (which I have not seen) called "Timewave Zero" which
provides a map of this interference pattern. Somehow combining motifs from
fractal mathematics and the I Ching, it supposedly predicts those moments in
the course of history in which a major "ingression of novelty" occurs - such
moments being occasions when the hyperobject shows its influence. McKenna
predicts that the final manifestation or "concrescence" of the hyperobject
itself will occur near the end of 2012 (also the end, incidentally, of the
present "Great Cycle" of the Mayan calendar). But what *is* "it"? Here is what
I copied from *The Invisible Landscape*, while in the Chicago library:
Achievement of the zero state can be imagined to arrive in one of two forms.
One is the dissolution of the cosmos in an actual cessation and unraveling
of natural laws, a literal apocalypse. The other possibility takes less for
granted the mythologems associated with the collective transformation and
concrescence and hews more closely to the idea that concrescence, however
miraculous it is, is still the culmination of a human process, a process of
toolmaking, which comes to completion in the perfect artifact: the mondaic
self, exteriorized, condensed, and visible in matter. Presumably, were such
a hyperspatial tool/process discovered, in a very short time it would
entirely restructure life's experience of itself, of time, space, and of
otherness, and then it would be these effects which would follow rather than
precede the concrescence, and which, through their atemporal influence on
the context of visionary experience, would be seen to have given rise to the
`apocalyptic scenario' in the expectation of so many ontologies. The
appearance in normal time of a hyperdimensional body, obedient to a
simultaneously transformed and resurrected human will, and able to plumb the
obligations and opportunities inherent in this unique juncture in energy's
long struggle for self-liberation, may be apocalypse enough.
There is much more to what Terence McKenna writes, and you can find a
skeptical but sympathetic account of some of his ideas in a recent issue of
*Esquire* (the one with the cover story on "How George Bush Went Mad in the
White House").
"THE MOST EXCITING THING POSSIBLE IS ACTUALLY TRUE"
Within minutes of disembarking at Gatwick International Airport in the UK I
had caught the attention of a customs officer, I think initially because of my
long hair and generally scruffy appearance. He went through both my bags,
finally settling on my wallet. He asked me to wait while he went away to
analyze something from inside it... and came back to tell me (I think I have
this right) that "cannabis remains" had been detected in it. My jaw literally
dropped at this, and I said I had no idea how they got there. He asked me,
"Have you ever smoked dope?" and I said yes. He asked, "Are you carrying any
now?" and I said no. He said I could go through.
Once I was through I immediately caught a train for Oxford. My first
priority was to meet Celia Green, founder of the Institute for Psychophysical
Research, and author of several books which impressed me so much when I read
them in late 1989 that I almost quit my degree at UQ in early 1990 in order to
devote all my time to earning money, so I could get to Oxford and somehow help
her organization. In brief, her philosophy is one of rigorous skepticism and
transcendent aspiration, and in her books *The Human Evasion* and *Advice to
Clever Children* (available in the Queensland State Library) she argues that
ordinary psychology and society are dedicated to the suppression of these
attitudes, owing to a fear of uncertainty and failure. Or, as she puts it in
*Advice to Clever Children*:
The human psychosis is extremely simple. Hatred of reality (originally
caused, it is to be supposed, by a traumatic experience or experiences of
objective impotence) has become displaced onto other human beings. This
state of affairs is expressed by attitudes of indifference to reality and of
interest in human society. The latter interest is usually rationalized as
altruism.
As an alternative to ordinary, `sane' psychology, she advocates `centralised
psychology', which is distinguished above all by the "perception of existence"
- that is, the perception that *reality is there* and unknown, and perhaps
unknowable:
The starting point is that one is interested in the universe. One observes
that one is finite and that this is intolerable. One has a limited time and
apparently limited capacities with which to find anything out...
Existential psychology, at least up to a point, consists of exploiting the
recoil from the despair of finiteness. The recoil is a drive with at least
the instinctive immediacy of the survival instinct. There is no point in
saying: "What is there to do? What could such a drive possibly tend
towards?" The survival instinct tends to prolong life; the fundamental drive
tends to inform itself about the universe. [from the same book]
The Institute is intended to function as an independent academic environment
for the investigation of philosophy, physics, psychology and so forth, and has
published a number of books on such topics as lucid dreams and out-of-body
experiences - the common factor generally being that the phenomena in question
cast some doubt on the status of everyday reality. (A review of the topics
investigated can be found in *The Decline and Fall of Science*, which the UQ
Central Library carries.)
What I saw of Oxford was narrow streets and people on bicycles. I paid an
unsolicited visit to the IPR, where it was suggested that I write a letter of
introduction; having done so, I waited a day and phoned, and was told that I
could meet Celia Green that afternoon.
We had tea in the IPR's backyard and talked for an hour. In person she was
very direct and alert; I mentioned that I had almost come in 1990, to which
she responded to the effect that "I wish people would stop saying they will
come and help, and just do it." I got the impression that the Institute has
not had the opportunity to conduct research on a reasonable scale for at least
a decade, owing to a lack of financial support, and that there are several
more books waiting to be published.
I described an episode that occurred during the first occasion on which I
tried magic mushrooms, a moment in which I lost all sense of space, time,
sensation, self (or so it seemed), which I subsequently came to think of as
`seeing the Void'; I asked if for her the "perception of existence" had such a
quality, but I gathered that it referred more to an *analytical perception* of
the inconceivability of existence and consequent total uncertainty. I also
asked if she had any "anomalous experiences" of her own, but she could recall
only an incident from a fever at the age of 21, in the course of which she
appeared to hear a clock that was not there.
We talked hardly at all about her scientific ideas, except briefly about the
idea of higher dimensionalities, which she argued for years before it became
fashionable in mainstream theoretical physics (there is an aphorism in one of
her books: "I postulated infinitely many dimensions on the grounds of economy
of hypotheses"). She considered that there had been progress on this front,
but was still dissatisfied with the relative complacency that exists regarding
the nature of physical concepts (the question of the "interpretation" of
quantum theory, for example).
On the way out I noticed a PC, but no Internet connection...
So: if there are any millionaires reading this who have an interest in
furthering truly fundamental and independent research, *this* is the person to
go to. The Institute has no shortage of ideas; what it needs is the means to
conduct its experiments. Celia Green's writings I think show her to be already
one of the great philosophers; she may yet get the opportunity to fulfil her
potential as a scientist as well.
EARTH SUMMIT ABORTED
In London I was unable to contact any of the people I thought I had some
chance of visiting, but I *did* find a place called the Brain Club I'd been
told about in Australia. It's a bar and nightclub which seems to be a regular
venue for "New Age" style demonstrations: meditation techniques, "Hopi ear
candles" (?), mind machines and so forth. I didn't see any of these, but I got
to try a "psychoactive cocktail" - an ordinary alcoholic cocktail mixed with
small quantities of a "nootropic" or "smart drug", any of a class of compounds
which are neither illegal nor "officially" sanctioned as cognitive enhancers.
I tried "Rise 'n' Shine" and went for a walk to Leicester Square, which people
told me was a place where a lot of `alternative' people might congregate.
"2.30 am, Leicester Square, London
"after I left the Brain Club, went for a wander, ended up at the fenced-off
park here, wandered thru mall - there was a group of born-again C.'s preaching
in the square - early on I felt like getting the mike and preaching for "Bob"
or V/R, but actually ended up just listening & watching both speakers &
crowds, and was feeling more peaceful than my usual `anguished
philosophizing'. At first I thought, is the `Word of God' reaching me? But
then I thought, no, it's probably that psychoactive cocktail."
After the preachers finished, I went to see "Wayne's World", then returned
to the Square and spoke with various people until dawn. London was "shallow"
and obsessed with fashion according to one. Another said, "In London, no-one
wants to know you... they're only after money, sex and drugs... You can get
money if you're a show-off." To make a broad generalization I felt that while
the youth of San Francisco put anger, energy and creativity primarily into
politics, in London the emphasis seemed to be on music; of course there was
music in SF and politics in London, but it was as if Londoners had largely
given up on political concerns and so were more relaxed and more despairing
than their Californian counterparts.
On the other hand, I was repeatedly told while in California, "Everyone
here is crazy", and this was *not* said in an affectionate or tolerant sense.
*No-one* said that to me in London.
As in San Francisco, I slept in parks and on benches. Looking ahead to Rio
de Janeiro, I thought: "I have about US$200 left, which is meant to see me
through another week in London and two weeks in Brazil. I still haven't learnt
a word of Portuguese, and I would definitely be pressing my luck to try living
in the streets in Rio." So after unhappy contemplation of my options, I
decided to leave London early, skip Rio and instead return to Australia via
California.
In my last few hours in London I stumbled across Hyde Park, which is famous
as a place where people go to harangue the public from their soapboxes. Amidst
the Muslim, Christian, and humanist preachers I ran into a guy called
"Maxwell" who was speaking on the alleged involvement of George Bush, the Pope
and various others in drug trafficking, and how they laundered their funds
through the now-defunct BCCI of Pakistan ("Bank of Conmen & Cocaine,
International", according to Maxwell). After he had finished speaking I asked
him what his sources of information were; he said it was there to be found in
the back issues of various newspapers and current affairs journals.
Departing the UK (from my `travel diary'):
"?9 am at gate 23 having made it through Customs etc. While still in the
general Airport area, I went to the toilet to empty out the `cannabis wallet'
(to throw it away) & as soon as I came out of the cubicle I was apprehended by
2 `Sussex Police' who there took my passport & ticket, had me empty my bag,
asked questions, and finally let me go. I presume they were looking for
*someone*.
"This is something I will NOT miss about the UK: the `security' paranoia..."
(Even when shopping, I never put my bags down anywhere without shop assistants
hurrying across to tell me that I should keep my bags close by me at all
times; otherwise they'd have to call in the bomb squad...)
Back in San Francisco I was determined to do things differently this time. I
slept most nights in a backpackers' hostel, rather than on the street; and I
booked my flight out for a week after I arrived, so that I would have a better
chance of catching an event like the Whole Life Expo, which I missed the first
time around. And it paid off! On my first day there I found flyers advertising
`An Evening with Robert Anton Wilson'.
For the uninitiated: Robert Anton Wilson may well be considered one of the
late 20th century's great writers and philosophers, in about a century's time.
In the form of dozens of novels, essays and nonfiction books, he has
intelligently explored and "popularized" all sorts of shunned, ignored or
esoteric topics, such as the occult, conspiracy theories, psychedelics,
Fortean phenomena, Leary's ideas, and the interpretation of quantum theory.
He's best known as coauthor of the "Illuminatus!" trilogy, but you might
currently find in UQ bookshops or libraries nonfiction books like "The New
Inquisition" and "Prometheus Rising". The first time I arrived in the US I
found he had released a new book, "Reality Is What You Can Get Away With": a
mock movie script dramatizing many of his concerns and ideas, populated with
guest appearances (and stills from famous movies!) featuring Humphrey Bogart,
Orson Welles, Jane Wyman, Wilson himself, and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
Now I was offered the chance to experience `An Evening with Robert Anton
Wilson', `based' on this new book, to be held in one week's time. The event
was advertised somewhat surreptitiously, on glossy flyers tacked to telephone
poles in Berkeley and San Francisco. The flyers gave a phone number, which
gave another phone number, which gave a series of addresses where tickets
were available.
Walking one morning in San Francisco I met a guy panhandling, gave him some
money and talked with him a bit. He made a few jokes with occult connotations
and I indicated that I understood, and soon we were talking more intently...
He was a rock lyricist (I'll call him "Al"), and sang me a few of his songs -
he'd been involved with music all his life; he was at Woodstock ('68) at 15 -
but the most interesting part of his life seemed to me to be his occult and
psychedelic experimentation. He had used psychedelics in conjunction with
Magick (ie ritual magic - see the works of Aleister Crowley) and the set of
ideas popularized by Timothy Leary ("Neuro-logic"). He described his current
orientation as "Taoist psychedelic Christian" and was in addition a member of
various magickal orders, such as Crowley's A.:A.:. He told me that one in five
police in the States is a Freemason (in a sense this would not be surprising,
as Masons have been very influential in American history - many of the
original revolutionaries - Washington, Jefferson - were Masons) and seemed to
know about the neurochemistry and psychological effects of every drug I had
ever heard of. In short, he was a very interesting person to talk with, and I
soon suggested that we see Robert Anton Wilson's presentation together. So we
went and bought tickets and planned to meet again Friday night at a donut
shop.
I went to Berkeley hoping to hear the SubGenius radio hour (it turned out to
play at 4.30 am on Saturdays). I still had a Brazilian visa, albeit no ticket,
and had a vague hope of proposing to be "Bob's" representative in Rio if the
Church was willing to get me there. But this never happened; in fact I never
even heard the radio program. Instead I got talking with another panhandler,
and... I'll let him speak for himself. The next section is transcribed from a
tape he recorded, in the course of the 36 hours I spent with him; he took good
care of me, in what seems to have been a very dangerous environment, in
between managing his affairs at street level and fiddling with an accounting
program he had written (in the programming language C; he had a degree in
computer science from UC Berkeley). I have blanked out his name and a few
other names in the transcript, in case this article somehow gets back to
Berkeley.
LIVE FROM BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
On 29th of the 5th, '92, I, Mr J[...], met a strange individual, at which
point I was panhandling on University Avenue, which leads to the University of
California at Berkeley... The gentleman proceeded to be quite genteel, and
gave me $2, and.. I was about to go through DT's and did not want to approach
the Family... which I will discuss later. He bought an orange soda - orange
juice - I bought *one* forty-pounder, common word for a forty-ounce beer indis
America...
Next point, we acquired the forty-pounder, which I have previously described,
and proceeded to Fred's - that's F-R-E-D-S - liquor store, on University, a
main street, or common name `main drag', in Berkeley. It proceeds to the
Camp... it'll take you *dead* to the Campanelli. Ah, that's street talk. If
you were on University, off the freeway, off of 101, you would have no choice
but to run into the Campanelli. The Campanelli is described like the Mecca...
of the campus. ...it's the centre place, all the riots take place there,
and Lawrence Livermore Lab is approximately 1.6 miles up the hill. Nobody
knows what goes on up there. It's a strange situation. At this point, since
the riots started in L.A., the... shall I not make this non-racial... most of
the southerners - i.e. Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego - are moving
here. The financial situation is atrocious. Persons are panicky. As of next
month, in reference to previous date, male gentlemen will be cut 40% of their
welfare, and at that rate ... they can't have a room, unless they share one.
...The tax situation is getting impossible.
During this break, my recently-met... "co'en"... has gone to find a match. At
present I am trying to smoke a cigarette which I should have had long since
ago, but we're sitting in a very prestigious neighborhood at Berkeley which
I cannot describe. It's a hilly section, almost mountainous. Um, not long
since ago, in the east hills of Oakland, there was a terrible fire.. The
whites were underinsured, and the store prices went up tremendously, in the
ghetto. The insurance rates skyrocketed. One might say that this is one of the
most genteel places in the world...
I'm trying to do as much as I can on sixty minutes of tape, that's almost
impossible but I'll do it anyway. We acquired this recorder at a Radio Shack,
at an incredible price, which was outrageous, and we probably could have
bought it in the streets from some bum who would have stolen it for us, but
that's okay. For a moderate home here, with two bedrooms, it is approximately
$350,000. Old, not new. My co'en and I were... it was really funny - we were
travelling down the street... and I - he thought it was a joke - and I said
"How much do you think this house is worth?" and he says, some outrageous
figure, terribly low, and it was just a piece of shit. And it was
approximately $300,000, and they were still repairing it, so it was still
going up. Berkeley is becoming a very expensive place, the rent control here
is outrageous, the landlords are crazy.
Key number one: Remember this: If you're a student and you're coming to
Berkeley, the first and last security deposits are almost impossible.
Number two: Write letters and acquire. Number three: Housing's almost
impossible. Number four: Don't carry cash. Number five: Look like a bum, and
stay away from Telegraph, which is right away from campus, from the
Campanelli. There's a huge clock, it's in the centre of campus.
Dangerous situations... stay away from anything south of Martin Luther King...
especially at nights. The gang affiliation here is increasing, and I don't
know what's going to happen. Whites are being antagonized. Panhandlers,
beggars, are aggressive, passive, whatever. I myself, I needed a drink, I
asked my co'en for some money, as I said previously, and he gave me $2. Had
he not been so genteel, he would have been in trouble. One of my... a person
that I know, attempted to snatch his bag, in which was his money, containing
about a hundred dollars, passport, ID, and he was quite trustworthy.
While I don't like to dwell on this negativity, but we're sitting in a park
and I'm the only black here, and it's just like algebra, what you do on one
side you do on the other. My co'en was sitting in an almost all-black
neighborhood, and I think he was a mite flighty and perplexed. At this point
I think he's learned a couple of lessons. I might describe this place as a
park for yuppies. Yuppies are upper-class whites. Or, they can be blacks. A
very expensive neighborhood of Berkeley, and where the kids play, and it's
very, shall I say, relaxing.
As we're sitting in the park, a small child, that knows nothing of hatred,
war and poverty, gets out of the play area which is enclosed by a fence, and
smiles at us, and its parents hail him. Probably background noise can be
heard, and they're probably very rich Indians. Indians here are very affluent,
they're very rich, they're very everything. Chinese are buying almost entire
towns. The blacks have racism, war, and poverty, in their hearts. They think
that everything must come their way for nothing. I'm black, but... I worked
hard for my living. I've been given breaks for things that I shouldn't have.
I've been to jail a million times, I'm drinking in public, my attitude is
belligerent, but I'm quite well respected. Now, certain things I can't say at
this point. I belong to an organization, there are several here, and my
organization is nonviolent. There are things I can do, and certain things I
can't do. The details can be filled in by my co'en, which he's witnessed,
either verbally or visually.
Most elderly persons, in my age group - excuse me for not previously saying
it, approximately 40 to 50 - have their own social circle, which cannot be
broken. They're almost always protected, there's always one behind another,
but at this point I don't have to be protected, I can page them. There's
no drug affiliation, there's no anything. Should I say that, we're peaceful.
I'd like to say that we pray for no hatred, no war, no poverty, but none of
us are perfect. I can't turn the other cheek... I was adopted by a very
affluent Jewish family, and at present I'm a bum on the streets, and my son's
in med school, not because I elect to be, but because I'm an alcoholic. I'm
far from an oaf, but things just don't work right. I have my state of mind
that, if you pay for something, then it's yours, and then property taxes
upsets me. If I work all my life and pay for a home I think I should be free
not to have to pay the government anything. If I park my car and I don't
have coins in my pocket to pay for it, i.e. parking meters, they have a law
here, and they have machine devices that ... a quarter, and you have to put
'em in there, and if not it's fifty dollars almost. And if you don't move in
approximately one hour, it's towed away, and that's forty-five dollars to get
it out, forty dollars for the fee, and if you don't get it out in a couple
of days it just goes up and up and up.
At this point I'm sitting in a children's playground, and a mother is playing
squeaky train, whatever that is. [MOTHER: Squeaky train, it's leavin'...
Ready? Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga... choo-choo! Chugga-
chugga - ah! Stopping, we've got one more passenger to get on, <screeching
noise>, hurry up... Squeaky train is departing... LITTLE GIRL: Could I have a
ticket? Thank you. MOTHER: Squeaky train is going..] The coachman asked for
the ticket, and one plays the engineer, and I'm sure you can hear the
background noises. [LITTLE GIRL: Faster, faster, faster! MOTHER: The train is
speeding along! You can hardly hear its name because it's squeaking so loud..
squeak, squeak, squeak- ] What's the name of this train? [silence] This train,
the name? [MOTHER: The name of the train is.. the... LITTLE GIRL: Squeaky
train.] And your name my dear? [silence] Just a little name. [MOTHER: nervous
laughter] I'll play it back for you in a couple of seconds. [MOTHER: The train
is going... chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga...You can say your name... you can
tell him...] Just your first name. Don't be shy... Oh well. I guess she's in
first-class section and she won't be bothered.
At present we're sitting in a famous bar on University Avenue, called "Spats".
Pretty prestigious... I've been frequenting here for approximately 15 years...
I couldn't study. This was the only place I could come to study.
You know what happened to me the other day? I was sitting down drinking my
bottle of wine, in the middle of the streets, this idiot approaches me and
asks how many cannons did Pachelbel shoot. I said, "You know what a canon
is? In music?" He goes, "Yeah, it's a big gun, a big one they used to have."
He said he'd loan me a quarter. I said "I'll give you fifty cents to get the
fuck out of my face, you idiot!" A canon is a short work of music, and
Pachelbel only wrote... what, six or seven?
At present we're approaching the freeway area, an off-ramp, out of Berkeley,
just the opposite of University. ??Child&White was a very affluent family in
the hills, ??Child&White is the most prestigious company in the hills. I
suggest that they may be worth trillions. My friend and I are now proceeding
under the bridge, to one of my old campsites, and I'll attempt to take a photo
of him, of the city and... anything. At present I'm totally perplexed, and I'm
*not* in the best of modes. I want to go to sleep... I'm gonna do it. My
backup doesn't ever come down here, because it's not their part of town, but I
just wanted to show him sections. Um... I'm not worried about myself, I just
wanted to show him how to survive, and a couple of other things. At present we
are approaching 101 Overpass, to San Francisco... I mean 540 to San Francisco,
then we'll go to 101, and I'll show him where I used to sleep a long time ago,
when I first became a tramp. To my right is some ?4by4s I need, so I'll put
some notation and I'll have N[...] and the rest of the guys come by, and
clip the rest of the wires down, and take them, and put them in a safe place.
My friend is quite quiet now, because I think he thinks I'm crazy...
He's giggling, and I'm still online. I hope this thing will be published,
which if it's published it'll probably be the world's best-seller, I have to
go to the b-room, very short from here, and I'll try and see if any of the
old tramps are around.
I'm sure you can here the traffic.. we're at the freeway, under the bridge.
It's a common practice that orientals do not issue money. Although I am not
prejudiced, but they are trying to buy up everything in the city of Berkeley,
but it won't work. They're pretty good. They have can collectors and they have
echelons such as in China... Chinese restaurants, Thai restaurants, everything
is always Chinese. They collect food out of dumpsters, mix it with eggs and
rice, and serve it to the persons that are very prestigious.
At this point my co'en - repeat, my co'en - is leaning against a grey post...,
and very... depleted of his energies. I'm waiting for my co'ens to come back
with positive cashflow. Repeat, positive cashflow. I can't say where they
acquired it or how they acquire it.
The traffic on the street at this point in a yuppie neighborhod - yuppie,
yuppie is younger, white, upper-class. Repeat, younger white upper-class. I'm
not racial, I was adopted by a very affluent Jewish family. Might I repeat:
this is not any racial statement. The name of the restaurant again, might I
repeat, is A[...], which means, `This is your coffee'. It is the
largest, but the largest, cocaine dealership in the city of ... I don't know
where we are. That, I can't repeat. I don't know where we are now, I don't
know where we are, I don't know where we are, I don't know where we are. But,
persons frequent there, and there's always traffic. From 5 o'clock in the
morning until approximately 2 o'clock in the...evening, from 5 am to 2 am.
At present, the connection for the Chinese, A[...], is French, but
they're Chinese cooks, they're Chinese chefs. At present he's doing his drop
connection; in approximately 45 minutes the garbageman will come by and pick
up the proceeds.
I myself have acquired funds through illegal means. And in the United States
if you're known as a snitch, then your ass is grass. In essence, you are dead
meat. One person could tell another person on the grapevine... grapevine means
such as, the story of gossip when you were in grade school. You tell the story
around the corner and it goes back around, but it's different. One person
tells another person, and it's gonna be verified, and they're dead meat.
On this evening we have experienced racial... also, drugs, and other type
negativity. We've avoided it all, thank God. We have taken pictures, which
will be enclosed supposedly, after this recording, and I'll probably come to
Australia... eventually.
He's trusted me for everything he's had. Two undercover cops approach us about
to go on-duty, saying, `Alright, alright, alright.' I have tons of outstanding
warrants... for only consuming alcohol in public. They dare not touch me, for
there's no room in the facilities here. Other purposes... I have echelons of
command, and they dare not touch me. Commands meaning... affiliation with a
clan, non-racial, nonviolent, unless need be.
There's always peace before the storm, and it's quite quiet in the streets
now. The shelters, which are for homeless, are closed. So that means most of
the thieves are in house, or should I say home. One might also say that
there's a voluntary curfew - *voluntary* curfew - in the city of Berkeley. In
Los Angeles the National Guard has been called out and we're praying for
peace. My friend is totally perplexed and he's learning and maybe somebody can
get something off this. Right now my English is about to get... hello,
kangaroo-ish, I'm gonna jump around.
Approximately 12:20 pm, we're sitting here waiting on persons that are to meet
me at our camping spot, commonly known as a crash spot in street linguistics,
or should I say street tramping. I and my co'en are to crash together. Of
course he's to crash separately, but we'll be less than three feet apart and
we'll be well-guarded by my company.
Approximately 2.75 hours preceding this existing conversation, we witnessed
things that were happening between Chicanos, which are Mexicans that were
American-born, in the ghetto section. Firearm connection, guns cocked,
pistols pulled, we moved, down to an area that's called the Flatlands. And we
proceeded down to the marina...
We're watching two Hell's Angels... In the background you can probably hear
motorcycles departing previously mentioned restaurant. I myself had to fly my
colors, which are black...
After my friend paged... I paged my friend, my friend paged me, it took him
approximately three minutes. Now my co'en, or my friend from Australia, is
welcome to the camp. From here I can see two soldiers on the left, and, I
don't know what N[...]'s up to, he went to get a drink before the store
closes, and we'll be safe... I want to send a message for the world, we need
no more hatred, war or poverty. Fourth time repeated: no more hatred, no more
war, no poverty. Au 'voir.
At this point I'm explaining to my co'en that, I'm
too scared to fight and too proud to run. At this point *you* might be
perplexed. He's just touched my piece, which nobody else does. Piece is a
common name in America, for a gun. It's a .44. Not a Magnum, but a .44. It's
the most powerful handgun in the world. I'll have to aim at your feet to hit
your head. No violence, and that's my thing, but, we have to protect one
another. As I say this, in the background, if it's loud enough, you're gonna
hear the [deleted] sound. I'm quite well protected, on the streets, and I'm
happy, that I could do a favor for a person, an educated person, and maybe he
can spread the education that things in the world will get better. The world
can get better if we let it be. We gotta change it... all persons. Race,
color, or creed, we've got to change this world. Money, financial situations,
or everything else, I don't care. I'm out on the streets and I've got more
than enough money in my pocket... and I have a credit card in my pocket that
can do anything. Though for right now, I'm gonna teach my co'en what tramping,
and Americans, are about. Off.
OCCULT SECRET OF POWER REVEALED
The human race wished me to accept the limitations with which it had
thoughtfully provided me.
Celia Green
Act like a dumbshit and they'll treat you like an equal.
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
The venue for my evening with Wilson seemed to be an abandoned warehouse on
the edge of San Francisco. Al wasn't in the donut shop, nor did he seem to be
in the long queue outside the warehouse/studio/whatever. Searching my pockets,
then my bags, I found I had somehow lost the ticket in the course of sleeping
rough in Berkeley and then rushing to SF, but I managed to convince the guy at
the door that I had had a ticket by remembering the number (it was `00005').
The space inside was about the size of Mayne Hall; seating for several
hundred people had been put in place, and behind and above us were a group of
technicians coordinating projectors and lasers used to create interesting
pictures on the wall behind RAW as he spoke. The bar was selling smart drinks
(but I got the impression harder drugs were being sold in the crowd; someone
later asked me if I knew where she could get some Ecstasy) but having only
Australian currency left I didn't get anything. Al was inside already, talking
to some people he seemed to know from somewhere, so I sat down to wait for the
talk. The audience seemed to be largely decadent cyberpunk sophisticates, if
you know what I mean; probably lots of independent artists and designers, and
young people into the techno/rave scene (a rave was held after RAW finished).
But there were a few scruffier individuals such as myself, and even a guy in a
black cape and hood carrying a placard emblazoned with four Dobbsheads.
In a sense I found the talk a disappointment, but this was mostly because I
found much of it familiar from his books. But he started out by telling jokes,
first sending up certain fashionable causes (he said he was starting a "Save
Our Rats" movement, to rescue lab rats, and suggested reeducation camps for
smokers - this part I didn't actually find very funny), and then the state of
American electoral politics: saying something along the lines of, "Who do we
have to choose from? Well, there's Bush, who wants to prove that the USA is
still Number One in at least one area of technology, we can kill more people
than anyone else. Then there's Clinton, who says he tried a joint but didn't
inhale (and there are people who believe that!). And then there's Ross Perot,
who says he wouldn't have gays or adulterers in his cabinet. Who does that
leave? If you take away the gay women, and the gay men, and the adulterers,
who's left? A bunch of twelve-year-olds who can't vote!" He mentioned two
`alternative' campaigns running (neither of which he invented): `Cthulhu for
President - Why Always Vote for the *Lesser* Evil?' and `Hannibal Lecter for
President: He's Killed Fewer People'.
Eventually he got on to the topic he is best known for, the relative or
uncertain nature of reality. He mentioned how he had once written an
introduction for a book by a "UFOlogist" called George Hunt Williamson (I
think) who had been with a magnifying glass of survey photos of the Moon and
Mars he obtained from NASA, and had `discovered' hundreds of `industrial
structures' proving that there is life on the Moon and it has been hidden from
us by the Conspiracy. He wrote Wilson saying would you write an introduction
for my book, I'm a great admirer of your work, I'll pay you $500. "I needed
the money", said RAW; so he wrote the introduction, saying how it was
important to be open to new ideas. Now Williamson has written another book,
alleging that giant Masonic symbols are also visible in these same
photographs. "At first, I couldn't see what he was talking about", said RAW;
"then I smoked some pot, and had another look; and there they were, Masonic
symbols on the moon... And the universe is like that, the more you look for
evidence to support a particular viewpoint, the more you find..." At this
point the lasers drew an eye in a triangle behind him: the All-Seeing Eye
which appears on Masonic emblems and the US $1 note, the Eye of Horus
resurrected by Aleister Crowley for his Law of Thelema... After a while, the
laser-drawn eye began to blink.
He spent some time on the anthropomorphism and pettiness of the deities of
most religions ("Can you imagine Jehovah inventing something as complex as a
carbon atom?") before coming to what I think may be his favorite topic, what
writer Hakim Bey calls the "Free Religions" - half-serious half-fun, like the
Church of the SubGenius, or Brisbane's own Church of Virtuality/Reality. First
he mentioned the John Dillinger Died For You Society, whose members (profess
to) believe that the American Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger (St
John the Martyr) was in fact the savior. (One of John's immortal aphorisms,
"Lie down on the floor and stay calm", a marvellous procedure for dealing
with stress, he told to thousands of bank tellers, vice presidents...) Then
came Discordianism, which worships Eris, the Greek Goddess of "Chaos, Discord,
Confusion, Bureaucracy, and International Relations", the Five Stages of
Chaos. Discordianism seems to have been a widespread meta-underground within
the 1960s anarchist and psychedelic undergrounds in the US, and has its own
holy book, the *Principia Discordia*, wherein one may find such gems as "the
Law of Fives": "Everything in the universe can be shown to be related to the
number five, *given sufficient ingenuity on the part of the seeker*." (When
Wilson demonstrated the Law of Fives with reference to the Great Pyramid of
Cheops - "it has five sides - if you count the bottom" - the Eye and Triangle
behind him tilted to become a pyramid). Both Discordianism and Dillingerism
show up in Wilson's trilogy "Illuminatus!".
And finally he came to "Bob". Amid cries of "Praise `Bob'!" from all corners
of the audience he gave his version of how "Bob" got started in the Messiah
business; Dobbs was just a humble aluminum-siding salesman until one day in
1957 he got stuck in an elevator with L. Ron Hubbard, from whom he learned the
Secret of Power, which is this: "You know how dumb the average guy is? Well,
mathematically, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that!"
Here the lecture ended. There was a brief question period, during which Al
asked RAW if he'd heard of ayahuasca. Wilson said no, and at the end Al leapt
from the audience and gave him a piece of paper on which he had written about
the compound. "He's in the A.:A.: too, it's the sort of thing he'd want to
know about", he later explained. Then Wilson left and the crowd filed outside,
most of us just to wait for readmission to the rave. Al had booked a room for
me at a nearby motel in case I needed somewhere to sleep, but I wanted to stay
for the rave, so we bid farewell to each other.
I also chatted briefly with the guy carrying the Dobbsheads; he was a
member of the Bart Simpson Cabal of Berkeley, and gave me a card certifying
that I am a Discordian Pope (giving me license to pontificate on any subject).
The rave afterwards was spectacular, but I grew tired and bored after a few
hours, so I walked back to the hostel and slept. The next day I flew out of
America, heading for home.
I've been back for months now. But somehow, things just aren't the same...
\qix\netfnd1
DIARY OF A NET FIEND - Part I
My"approach" to psychedelics was via RAWilson and later Timothy Leary...
I read "Illuminatus!" when I was 13, and "Info-Psychology" when I was 18,
but didn't get to *try* the stuff until I was 21.
T1. 18 October 1991
Started by taking half a tab; got bored after half an hour and went for a
walk, visited several friends who didn't even realize that my consciousness
had been altered (in one case, even after an hour of conversation) until I
said I was trying LSD for the first time; eventually went home and had the
other half of the tab. After about 15 minutes I felt myself beginning to
experience a flow of ideas; in the course of 30 minutes filled 10 pages
with notes. The central idea concerned a novel I had been working on for
years, which was to incorporate and dramatize all the topics which I
wanted more people to know about - radical technological advances, various
possibilities of social transformation, philosophical skepticism, etc etc;
it occurred to me that I could tell the story of my actual encounters with
these ideas & how they had affected my life, how I kept modifying my
concept of this book that I wanted to write... culminating in an account
of this trip, and the realization that the book could be fact rather than
fiction, if I simply told my own story. By openly saying that I had taken
an illegal drug as well, I was hoping to *do* something, as well as merely
describing ideas... (ie I felt obliged to take a stand on this -
that existing attitudes and laws were not right).
Afterwards I went intothe city centre to some nightclubs and danced (it was
a Friday night). At one point, walking through a mall, I felt as if I had
now become a "new human" or something of the kind, in that there was a
technological product in my very brain (I was thinking of an essay on "The
New Species" that apeared, I think, in "Magical Blend" once).
T2. 25 October 1991
The main theme of this trip was a concept called "GAIA 2000": the Global
Alliance of Internet Anarchists, an acronym I had made up several days
before. I had vague notions of a revolutionary change in the world being
brought about through a global movement that communicated through the net,
which culminated in some sort of media event at the end of the century
which would be both a celebration and a revolution. I spent the peak of
this trip on the phone to a friend talking about what the actual event
might be like. It occurred to me that if a collective event of
overwhelming joy was possible, so should be one of collective despair. (In
the course of the phone conversation I imagined the nuclear arsenals of
the world coming under "popular control" in the remaining years of the
century, with the final "event" being a mass decision to launch the
missiles anyway - there being nothing else to do other than hasten the
destruction.) My friend was studying ninjitsu within a certain tradition,
and it occurred to me that another form a collective event could take wold
be a collective *initiation*; ie that mystery schools, secret societies
and so forth with some form of initiatory practice could initiate the
*whole of humanity* into their secrets, through the planetary media. (The
connection of this to the ninjitsu tradition is that it was my impression
that the "core" of ninjitsu was a certain "state of being" possessed by
the masters of the tradition, the nature of which becomes clearer to the
student as they observe more of the master's responses to various
situations. This "state of being" was the sort of "secret" I had in mind.)
While I was on the phone to my friend some of my housemates were in the
loungeroom watching music videos, most of them by groups I hadn't seen
before Lawnmower Deth (with their appalling version of "Kids in
America"), Sonic Youth, and finally Metallica's "One", which is all about
a soldier who has lost all his limbs and senses and lies alive but helpless
on a hospital bed. (Offhand the lyrics are something like "Darkness -
imprisoning me - all that I see - absolute horror - I cannot live - I
cannot die - trapped in myself - body my holding cell...") This song made
a very deep impression on me and was partly responsible for the nuclear
scenario above; I imagined humanity as a whole entering a condition like
the narrator of "One": able to see in increasing detail the ongoing
destuction of everything that supports our kind of life on Earth, but
unable to do anything to halt the process.
T3. 1 November 1991
I only took half a tab this time and nothing particularly significant
happened; but it was part of a process of change in my attitudes. I was
intrigued by an idea from William Irwin Thompson (see below), that what
appears evil in one age may anticipate an "emerging good". I was breaking
the law in my lifestyle more and more regularly - tripping, hacking,
living "on the streets" - but I could also see that those practices might
be elements of a future ("technomadic"?) culture (cf Thompson's
description of "metaindustrial life" in "Darkness and Scattered Light"),
so in a sense I decided to pursue them more vigorously and see if I could
get a clearer idea of what such a culture might be like.
I was introduced to acid and the Internet at about the same time, and I
ended up coining a slogan for myself to describe my new orientation:
"From UQ via Internet, Acid, and Chelsea to GAIA 2000" - UQ being the
University of Queensland, where I was enrolled in science, and "Chelsea"
being the name of the house where I lived.
T4. 8 November 1991
I came back from this trip with the concept of "Peace Talks in the War on
Drugs"; also in the course of it I saw people on MUDs for the first time...
T5. 16 November 1991
This trip was the first time that I hallucinated noticeably (eg seeing the
hairs on my forearm writhing, like something out of "An American Werewolf
in London"). I also had a good listen to Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells"
for the first time. But the most interesting thing that happened was that
I decided to phone someone I had met on an Internet BBS. When I first
tried she wasn't in, and it was suggested that I try again a few hours
later. I sat down to write out a list of things to talk about, and as
usual got carried away. I ended up writing an essay on Life, the Universe
and Everything which took all of that time to complete. When I tried again
she still wasn't in, which was just as well since if I'd read it over an
intercontinental phone link I would have had a phone bill for several
hundred dollars. Anyhow, here is what I wrote; the ideas expressed largely
sum up the thoughts I wrote about under T1-4.
(I eventually sent it to her by email.)
[\qix\ksundeen.txt, scriptur.003]
T6. 15 December 1991
Two days after this one I was talking (on a bbs) with a friend trying to
describe it to her, and there was so much to explain that I decided to
write the whole thing up and email it to her. The resulting document was
500 lines long and eventually I posted it to alt.drugs as well. I'll try
to send a copy to anyone who's interested in reading it, but I think the
full text would be a bit much for Leri-L. Basically it is a blow-by-blow
description of a strong trip which turns spectacularly weird and bad
towards the end. I think this is the most extreme part [SPOILER WARNING
for those who will read the whole thing :) ] -
[lengthy excerpt from \qix\t6.txt, scriptur.003]
T7. very late December 1991
By contrast with T6 this one was very positive, although a little
overwhelming. It went on for about 18 hours, in the course of which I saw
my first live rock concert - some band whose name I still don't know. The
main quality was the information - tons and tons of novel thoughts. This
was the trip on which I first conceived of a way that a religion like
Christianity might be consistent with my `scientific' understanding -
but once I had conceived of that I saw that the same reasons applied to
any other religion you cared to name. One similarity with T6 was that I
again thought I might have experienced a permanent change in the nature
of my consciousness (perhaps I did), only this time that I was `on top
of it'. One Paranoid Idea which sticks in my mind from T7: in the 1970s
Timothy Leary coined the slogan S.M.I^2.L.E. (Space Migration, Intelligence
Increase, Life Extension), and it struck me that one of the emblems of Acid
House and the psychedelic revival was the smiley face... I wondered if this
was somehow `engineered' by people associated with the origins of Acid
House, who were sympathetic to Leary's ideas... Anyhow, here are some
things I wrote about T7 some time later:
"The next day [after seeing Akira] I wandered around Brisbane and realized
that according to most familiar standards I had reached a real low. I still
had my dreams of the future and many creative projects but all of this was
in abeyance; in the mean time I was homeless and taking drugs. I had one
trip left, a "snowflake"; I took it about 3 pm that afternoon. A little
while into the trip I decided it would be my last."
...
"My 7th trip was not a bad one, in fact there were moments when it felt joyous,
but as it all happened I despaired of ever being able to write about it in
the fashion of my 6th; I said to people afterwords that it felt as if an
encyclopedia's worth of information had been poured into my head or had
passed through my awareness.
"There was a moment when I thought of the eye in the triangle: my brain was
like a vast knotted string, whose knots encoded all my experience, and all of
that experience was being threaded through the triangle and so my whole
previous self, perhaps the previous structure of my brain, was somehow
unravelling as this took place. What was happening was that I was coming to
know just how much I knew, how much information I had taken in during my life.
"This took place on the day, or a few days after, Mikhail Gorbachev had
resigned as President of the USSR. I thought, this means the New World Order,
in the sense of a single world system, really is here now; the Cold War was a
system, but it was predicated on conflict; there is no metasystem conflict
now... in which case the public image of the nature of that metasystem, the
public image of the agenda of the world heads of state, becomes vitally
important, since it is likely to act as a self-fulfilling prophecy... Boris
Yeltsin becomes a pivotal figure since he is clearly prepared to cooperate
with George Bush in some sense, but the media does not `know' his character
and the way they project/amplify different potential Yeltsins will affect the
way in which Bush's group try to figure out how to work with him, which will
in turn affect any agendas they propose... so it is very important that the
media and everyone in general realize that this condition exists now, in
which self-fulfilling prophecies can operate, so that they can take advantage
of it and not make any mistakes.
"I was conscious that I was feeling a sort of `cosmic optimism' owing to this
sense of positive possibility for the world, and I was conscious that this
state of mind was associated with a `good trip' so perhaps its reality was
somehow suspect, but it seemed to me that since I had derived this optimism
from a consideration of the new state of affairs that existed in the world
as of that day, since it was a reasoned optimism, that (perhaps for the first
time) it was a fully justified optimism as well..."
To be continued...
AS NOTED AT THE BEGINNING, \QIX\NETFND2 HAS BEEN LOST, HOWEVER COPIES DO EXIST
AND AN EFFORT IS BEING MADE TO RETRIEVE ONE.
\qix\netfnd3
DIARY OF A NET FIEND - Part III
T11 (G1). midApril 1992
This one was my first group trip; I accompanied 3 friends - T., G., and L.
- who were all taking their first trip, to find out what it was like. All
of them were familiar with the Internet as well, so the whole experience
potentially had a "net-culture" flavor, but in the end it led to something
quite unexpected: the return of the Elder Gods, and the manifestation of
the Church of V/R. READ ON IF YOU DARE... ;)
(As before, the first part is something I wrote shortly after the actual
event.)
g1
monday night - G1 - 20-04-92
my first attempt to document group trip #1
t. l. and i each took half a snowflake at swann rd - shortly after we
were talking about how do you know when it has started - i remember t.
laughing hysterically at something as she lay on my bed, and much later she
said that was when she knew she had started tripping - then we walked to the
bus stop on fred schonell, a long walk, and i think we were losing it by the
time we reached the bus stop - we got on the bus and sat in the middle,
accordion section - i remember both t. and l. were "responding" to this
so they must at this point have been seeing things as altered or otherwise
more interesting than usual, and i remember at the time thinking `aha, now
they "know" they're tripping' and thinking that i was controlling the
experience more myself because i wasnt seeing the movement of the bus as so
interesting or strange [although when i caught the bus from the city to st
lucia in my own T#7, my sense of space and time was distorted or amplified,
in that i seemed to feel the changes of direction at corners more vividly than
usual] - t. stared around at the accordion walls with the widest grin i
had ever seen on her face
went to city in order to meet g. outside f.yard - off bus, remember
walking past stefan's, across mall past police, into hungry jacks where l.
& i bought something to eat and t. played with ??/ and i think left her
wallet there, to be picked up again at some later time?? - then we sat and ate
on wall near centre of mall, l. had conversation with some friend and i
think i said to her afterwards, `you managed to have a normal conversation',
as i was wondering whether we'd be able to reenter ordinary reality in a way
that would still seem `normal' - then we went to f.yard found g., i think
went in with him, g. and i tried to work out someway of inconspicuously
passing him his snowflake, i realised i hadnt cut it in half for him, tried to
decide what to do, ultimately just gave it to him and didnt try to explain
that it was a full rather than a half, maybe because i didnt want to give
negative preconceptions [after all, if you tell someone on their first trip,
theyre having halves, youre having a full but i would have given you a half
if i had planned properly, implies that a full tab might be too much, which
suggests that the upcoming experience might be `too much' for you, whiich i
wouldnt have wanted to suggest] - i remember the group on stage singing songs
in a way that seemed to me to be really passionless, as though they were just
going through motions somehow - i had a bad or empty feeling in myself
beginning in myself about this time, which i relate to n. saying `look at
all these people around us, they dont know what theyre doing' or `theyre
running away from something in themselves, they feel inadequate' etc - i
remember interrupting l. as she danced to say i was going off for a walk,
didnt know how long i'd be gone
i think on walk felt very hollow, was being receptive to everything i have
read which has ever alleged that western culture is very hollow etc, ended up
going to las vegas in order to play video game in order to distract myself
from feeling, and `knew' that by doing so i was confirming this critique of
individuals' actions, that they did things in order to avoid the feeling of
emptiness or pointlessness, and as i played the game [the simpsons] with bart
dodging various figures in suits, i was thinking most of the games [social
games, in psychological sense] people play are just this empty - they're all
fleeing the absence of any purpose to life or existence, so they do things in
order to avoid the emptiness - i think my state of mind amounted to depression
I never finished this description... but after I finished playing the
video game, I went back to the Funkyard nightclub and met up with the
others. For the next few hours we wandered through the mall, went to the
QUT campus and logged on briefly, and finally went back to T.'s flat.
Along the way we invented the euphemism "zenning" for "tripping", so that
we could talk about what was happening without sounding suspicious to
anyone who might overhear us, and had a go at comparing ourselves to the
Four horsepersons of the Apocalypse (for some reason I forget). Throughout
this wandering my own feeling of emptiness persisted - at one point we
went into a nightclub and stood in a little phalanx of 4, watching people
dance to techno - and I felt as if I could "see" a sort of empty point
near the gut of each person, a core of hollowness from which they were
d
istracting themselves. Because of my concerns about mind-control I
refused to tell G., L. and T. what tripping was "like", so that they cold
find out for themselves in a fashion devoid of expectations put there by
me; and I felt that the emptiness I was feeling and seeing was somehow the
result of this effor on my part not to direct the trip one way or another
- I was just seeing the barrenness of what is ther when you take away all
human projections. Several times I said I was having a "Reality Trip".
We made it back to T.'s flat and sat on the floor talking and listening
to the "Twin Peaks" CD. T.later put it - and I agreed - that at this stage
it was as if we were all totally selfless, and really acting as a group
rather than individuals. However, after a while I began to have a growing
fear that we were starting to lose our minds altogether, that all the
novel input was overwhelming us somehow, and I felt a responsibility, as
supposedly the most experienced tripper, to somehow guide the situation. I
wanted to think of a paradigm which could act as a "reality-anchor" for
the situation without limiting or controlling us in anyway.
My mental life was still being strongly influenced by (a) the Cthulhu
Mythos, via N., and (b) The Book of the SubGenius, which I had read for
the first time only a few months before. In the Book of the SubGenius, the
Elder Gods are the primeval and apparently most powerful deities, and
there are exactly four of them, stemming from the "Allfather of
nothingness" (Azathoth); so I thought, we'll have to become the Elder Gods.
I also felt as if this new identity was coming out of "nothingness" - the
internal void I was feeling - which in turn I felt came into me from N.,
so it was as if N. was paying the role of Azathoth, in my mind. Anyhow, at
some point I introduced the concept, that we could "become" the Elder Gods,
and we played with the idea, phoning the announcer at JJJ radio and
harrassing him, and finally hanging up with the line "We are the Elder
Gods, and we demand a pizza!" (The Elder Gods were evidently absurdist
deities.) We turned to another local radio station, 4ZZZ, and the
announcer was actually someone I knew from university, so I suggested that
we go on air. We phoned up and asked if he'd be interested in the Elder
Gods manifesting themselves at the radio station; he said yes, so we
phoned a taxi, and we were off.
When we arrived at the studios, we began to realize that we had the
chance to go on air and say something, but we weren't sure what; in any
case, we went into the broadcast booth and ranted for perhaps half an
hour, saying that we the Elder Gods had returned, and we were tired of
humans trying to get us, the Gods, to do things on their behalf; and that
the Internet was here and alive and people had better come to terms with it;
and so on. (Unfortunately, no tapes seem to exist of what we actualy
said.) At one point, while we were off the air and a song was playing, my
friend the announcer came out of the booth and fell to the floor, saying
"Bob! Bob!" I stared at him in horror and said, "What?" He said, listen to
the music - and it was a Twin Peaks track that we had heard earlier that
evening... But at least it was the *other* Bob he was talking about - he
didn't know about SubGenius. Then I heard someone to my left saying to L.,
"Yes, you're a Sub", and again I thought, my God no, is all of this coming
true somehow? But they were simply saying to L. "You're a subscriber", ie
a financial supporter of 4ZZZ, which is a sort of community radio station.
But it was another strange coincidence.
When my friend's shift ended, we left ZZZ and walked to someone's house
(it was about 6 in the morning, and no one there was awake, so we just let
ourselves in and lay around in the living room there for about an hour),
where we lost G. (he went home); then we went to my place, where it had
begun, and L., T. and I all went to sleep there.
This trip was a crucial point in the formation of the Church of
Virtuality/Reality (V/R for short). Invented by L. after she left uni and
was banned from the computer labs there, she wrote the original
"Travelling Scriptures" just for something to do in a life without the
Internet. T. and I added to them, and now the Church's Scriptures are
available via ftp from various places (eg quartz.rutgers.edu,
/pub/incoming, as scriptures.tar.Z). There is another account of the
Church's genesis in the Scriptures.
(Incidentally, we actually worked out which of the various Elder Gods we
each incarnated, at least according to the SubGenius scheme. T. was
playing with a lighter all the time, so she was Yog-Sothoth, listed as a
fire elemental; at various points I worried about not being able to see my
own face, so I was Hastur, The Thing With No Face; L.'s net handles have
included "Dreamweaver", so she was Cthulhu; and that left G. as
Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young - which is arguably
relevant to him as well.)
Shortly after G1, I finally left on my trip overseas. I visited California
and the MidWest and London and Oxford, but never made it to the Earth
Summit. Shortly after I got back, I took my first trip in some time..
I think the account that follows was written the night I took it.
(T12) midJune 1992.
it is now 5 to 2 in the morning, and i am trying to construct an account of
the trip i have taken. briefly, i swallowed a tab at about 1 pm, went into the
state library while 'waiting for something to happen' and wondering if this
was going to be another `empty' trip.. i felt as if i was thinking/conceiving
of new things slightly faster than usual, but that basically my thoughts were
wandering aimlessly.. in any case i made my way back to t.'s flat by which
time i felt that something was definitely happening.. i felt as if i was
getting a tremendous sense of history / racial memory / whatever, that once
there was barren rock, then green life, then human cities, then electronic
connections.. i particularly remember seeing two kids on rollerblades in the
park near here and thinking of them as `the future', the next generation...
came into t.'s flat..
this is hard work. complex to describe and a lot to remember.
briefly again: i ended up lying down in the mattress in which i habitually
sleep but instead looking at all the books i have here with i thought a new
air of understanding... looking at ravenscroft, `the mark of the beast', i
felt a terrible chill as i felt that this was now making sense or is the
truth.. i was also looking at evolutionary journey and are you a transhuman?,
thinking how bmh said she identified with eve, and looking at her face
which i had always thought had an innocent smile, thought it now looked
predatorily tempting... fm's face seemed to be putting out an intense
challenge, on the other hand, and i looked at them and then to ravenscroft,
and felt that fm was in some sense the beast [nietzsche, the overman; fm,
talking about becoming transhuman]... remembered the mondo 2000 interview
where he says 'psychedelics are amusing at best'.. had a feeling that he once
had a trip in which he identified himself with the beast/antichrist whatever,
but rejected/repressed the notion and that this had to do with his apparent
dismissal of/aversion towards psychedelics... also part of mark of the beast
was understanding that the mark of the beast was the gash in christ's side,
being a beast meaning ?inflicting arbitrary violence? [althought dont know
the circumstances of the event]...
hmm. things are hard to relate now. went off into trance several times and
came out to find myself piping the music of the spheres, or the idiot
piping of azathoth [a.z.a ain soph auer].. felt as if i was entering nonbeing
or dreaming while awake... had flash that leary played antichrist/lucifer role
in 1968.. had terrible moment looking at terence mck book, and thought
'i understand the title - food of the gods. thats us, the humans'... thought of
bob calling down the xists in '98.. thought about being eaten, similarities
of form in biological history, eg 5fold shape, starfish, hand, human body...
pentagram/hexagram female/male... shoggoths as faceless entities, like
the male penis... had vision of 'cavewoman' holding her babies close to her,
thought of lilith, and idea of mother who eats her own children, thought of
'terra' as 'terror', we are the earth's children sent out as decoys to
divert things from the stars???.. idea of psychological differences between
women and men, 'women all will and joy', erect penis placed within vagina
which then becomes limp [subconsciously equals] has been devoured...
thinking of things from fund.christian perspective, that there is an active
evil force which works thru women in particular, it is the lie told in order
to survive [avital ronell: the desire for total openness is a totally male
desire... as i was typing this had image of young male somehow proudly
showing off an erection..].. but then felt that the godhead was in fact like
azathoth, was distrubed when i ??returned to my ego and found myself piping
mindlessly [celestial choirs etc].. felt at times as if my whole mind was
somehow being picked up and examined in eternity... etern[ity, eaten...
also thought: in that case, is it so bad to be eaten?... thinking about
kevin solway's allegation of perpetual warfare amongst women, imagining that
part of it is resentment against one's mother as another woman [you know what
it's like to be a woman in this world, and yet you still brought *me* another
woman, into it]... and then i think but this warfare is perhaps only
appearance and that women are more deserving of life because they are more
desirous of it [will and joy] and...
anyway...b. came knocking at some point and that was definitely an end to the
azathoth phase... he and i talked for a while, in which i kept losing the
thread initiailly as i was ruminating upon what i had just been through...
almost forgot!!! feelings of guilt, fear that maybe i had somehow failed to
save the earth by not taking n. with me to the earth summit, that thereby
the star beings would be called down on july 26 or at least that they would
have a feast???... and was thinking, i still have the chance to post an
account of this trip to the internet between now and then, but that in turn
puts my friends in danger of investigation by the police, in the name of a
cosmic concern which is perhaps wholly spurious...
the first beast, the one who achieves world domination - bob? janor says:
bob's grin conceals an ultimate hellish horror.. thought that somehow he was
a decoy and he knows it, and that is the horror...
also wondered if psychologically i am male or female.. basically there was a
lot of flipping back and forth between potential values during this... i am
afraid that my inherent tendency may be to become a fundamentalist christian
of sorts [which would perhaps be to commit the sin of pride in my reason
*ironic grin*]...
talked with b. , he recounted moorcock storybits, stuff from his encounters
with japanese martial arts traditions.. wont go into that here..
was thinking about word similarities all the time.. managed to justify/
rationalise cabalistic study as an attempt to understand unconscious
associations [sahara, safari, suffer, sephiroth..]
later walked around city with b., ran into mandev, and then ruth& friends in
mall... i raved a lot about age of horus etc both to b. and to ruth&friends,
about occult stuff etc also... went into metropolis, meditated upon human mass
as food for starbeings, 'what does it feel like to be an organelle in a
eukaryotic cell?'... et's in dark glasses sliding around on projectors...
decided i like ruth for her thoughtfulness.
another perception arising from aza: the horror of an existence in which
everything feeds on everything else.. certainly one way to deal with that is
to go b.'s path or even the beast's.. i think i can understand that now.
also thought that maybe this encounter with nonbeing is what happens
during menstruation...
T13. late June 1992
I don't think I've really got the energy to describe the next few properly,
so I'll just pass them by briefly. On this one, first I shared half an E
with T., but nothing discernible happened even after a few hours, so we
each ended up taking trips on top of that. We ended up going to Brisbane's
South Bank, which is a sort of miniDisneyland-wannabe (built on the site
of the World Expo that was held there in 1988).
T14. ?? early July 1992
This was another group trip, with T., and B., which also ended up in the
South Bank; we have about 90 minutes of it on tape.
T15 late July 1992
This one I took with G., but while L. and T. were around. Two things: there
was a part where I felt that all the violence of human history could be
explained by the following passage from the Book of the SubGenius:
Yes, my friends, this world is like nothing so much as the PIMPLE
on a GOD DAMNED MONKEY'S ASS. The best we can hope for is that another
monkey will come along and squeeze it for us.
The Church of the SubGenius *IS* THAT MONKEY.
I had a sudden flash that this passage expressed some sort of racial
memory, that disharmony and anger first entered human society when some
monkey refused to squeeze the pimple on another monkey's ass! I was
shocked by the thought, that the origin of all war, etc., could have been
something so simple - that what we are, basically, is a planet of monkeys
standing around waiting for "someone else" to squeeze our pimples for us.
(And the meaning of the line "the Church of the SubGenius *is* that
monkey" is thatthe Church will be the organization that forces us all to
stop looking to gurus and governments to solve our problems.)
The other part was a series of thoughts I had, which culminated a few
days later in the writing of this essay. In a sense, it does the same for
T11-T15 what the essay I reproduced in Part I did for T1-T5, it sums up to
a great degree the new perspectives I acquired in that time.
(The following is reproduced from the Scriptures of V/R.)
[there follows \qix\t15.txt, from scriptur.003]
T16. October 1992
Taken at a friend's house: for the first hour or so she played a techno
track by "The Future Sound of London" (called "Papua New Guinea") over and
over. It seemed to me that voices in the background of the music were
saying "Mommy, daddy... mommy, daddy..." and even after listening to it
straight, I'm not sure. Anyhow, most of the time as this track played I
stared into a mirror while the two residents of the house who were there
made themselves up and dressed to go out to a nightclub. One was male and
one was female, and when that combined with the words I was hearing from
the music, I felt as if I was entering a sort of process of Freudian
self-analysis. I felt that I was reentering a "childlike consciousness"
again; for example, I was sitting staring at myself in the mirror,
completely unaware of the passage of time and unconcerned with what anyone
else was doing - only it was as if I had returned to this with an
awareness of what it contrasted with; as if everyone begins life with this
sort of consciousness - that of a "dreaming god" - and then loses it and
becomes adult, *without being aware of the nature of this change as it
occurs*, and then very occasionally someone returns to the first state of
mind aware that they have been there before.
Every so often I would make a brief comment about what i was thinking
and my friends would say something like, "Yes, that's interesting" - and
here I thought I perceived another similarity to the state of mind of a
child: I imagined a child waling along, finding endless fascinating things
and trying to point them out to parents ("Mommy, daddy...") and the
parents acknowledging the child only passingly, since they are concerned
with more "important", adult things.
(I have failed to note two things which I meant to mention: prior to
seating myself before the mirror, another friend of the household, who I
had not previously met, was there, and he mentioned all sorts of topics
like free energy technology, conspiracies, psychic healing, quite out of
the blue. I was struck by one thing he said: we were talking about the end
of the century and whether anything would happen in 2000, and he compared
to a game which many people have been playing... "And then everyone will
make their final moves. Checkmate, checkmate, checkmate. Game over."
(The other thing was that when I looked into the mirror, I saw my face
shifting and changing, as if it was a special-effects composite of other faces
[cf the video to the original recording of "Cry"], which finally settled into
a face not my own: or perhaps my own in several decades time. I would
describe it as a magician's face - with the intense stare and controlled
expression - with a white, sharply defined beard, a bit like Robert Anton
Wilson's. [I had a beard at the time.])
Later, when my friends were finally ready to go out, they gave me a lift
to the city centre, from where I made my way to the 24-hour computer labs at
the nearest campus. As I made my way there I thought some very strange
things which I could not even describe to myself again, a few minutes
later; I only had the impression that I came very close to being "truly"
enlightened, and this accompanied an image of the eye in the pyramid,
closed as if sleeping, almost but not quite opening. This moment was
similar to certain other peak moments on previous trips, in that it was
something I did not manage to grasp in such a way that I could articulate
it later.
Once I got online, I checked my mail and found my first copy of ATI,
Activist Times International, an e-zine to which I had just started
subscribing. Here is the message I sent off:
Subject: Re: ok
To: gzero@tronsbox.xei.com (Ground Zero)
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 11:06:49 EDT
>
> ok, mialing you our last issue and info on how to get ATI.
> let us know if you want to be on the e-mail distribution list.
> GZ
wow. please put me on the list. i have encountered my first
[sort of] realtime issue of ati under interesting circumstances...
in the course of a trip, and accessing this account through a sort of
loophole [physically i am in australia, where i have *no* accounts!] in
the network of a uni at which i have never been a student..
and then to readjustin case's story 'arrested', when just to my rear
are the brisbane city gardens which appears to be intensively policed
each weekend, mostly to drive out drug use and dealing and homeless kids i
suppose, and on my way here i saw two police getting a guy to blow into a
bag... it's intersting how topical a.t.i suddenly feels! :)
Then I went to my other account and decided it was time to post to news a
transcript of a Terence McKenna essay ("New Maps of Hyperspace") that I
had typed to disk months before. While I was editing the document I got a
talk request from another Nyx user, someone from the UK I had never
ineracted with before. I now forget the original rationale, but he was
surprised to learn that I was in Australia and tripping, and then I was
surprised to learn that his grandmother had written a controversial book
on an alternative theory of human evolution that my mother had read when I
was about 15 (the book is by Elaine Morgan, I forget the title; the theory
is that at one time protohumans / hominids were semi-aquatic). We talked
for perhaps an hour, and then I went back to the McKenna essay. At some
point in reformatting it, I pretty much came down. At about 5 in the
morning I went hiome to sleep.
> Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
> Path: mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!nyx!mporter
> From: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
> Subject: Terence McKenna article [LONG]
> Message-ID: <1992Oct17.160417.8035@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
> Sender: usenet@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (netnews admin account)
> Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
> Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 16:04:17 GMT
>
> The following text has been reproduced very much without permission, and
> is no doubt copyright (C) 1989 Terence McKenna in its original form (ie
> without my typographical errors). I am posting it to the net since it
> seems to me to represent the radical core of McKenna's ideas, which are
> occasionally touched on by a poster; and in particular it shows some of
> the origins and nature of the "Timewave Zero" program, which I have
> received a few inquiries about.
>
> I first saw this article in a 1989 issue of a magazine called `Magical
> Blend'; I think it also appears in McKenna's anthology called `The
> Archaic Revival'. For all of McKenna's championing of "natural" highs,
> let it be documented for posterity that this introductory note was written,
> and this message posted, while under the influence of a certain well-known
> "artificial" high. (And I don't mean Cyberspace.)
>
> ---here begins the transcript---
>
> NEW MAPS OF HYPERSPACE by Terence McKenna
>
That's all for now...
\qix\aboutvr
\qix\biblio
\qix\cvrmisc
\qix\plasmate
\qix\nov92\181192
and notes on CafeNet from the folder of Pippin [transcribed by Qix]
\qix\aboutvr
about "the Scriptures":
although portions of the Scriptures may be available in printed form, I
envision them as being primarily an *on-line* phenomenon, an ever-growing pool
of information, stories, perspectives, and strangeness to which people
contribute and add, available through BBSs, ftp sites... a body of text far
larger than can fit within any one book, but which will be available
electronically to all, and which will be the "memory bank" or "knowledge base"
to which GAIA 2000 will refer...
if this definition were to be generally accepted it would mean that
*anything* posted to Usenet (for example) would become part of the Scriptures,
which perhaps demonstrates that this is a silly definition. Even postings
urging people to reject GAIA 2000 would be part of the Scriptures, in the
fashion that people who reject the Discordian revelation are Discordian Popes
(of the House of the Rising Hodge, I think).
about 2000 vs 2012:
Arguelles contrasts the Western/Babylonian/Christian calendar to the Mayan
calendar: the Mayan calendar is allegedly in tune with the "cosmic seasons",
or something like that, whereas the other is an invention of a patriarchal,
business-oriented culture out of tune with the universal cycles. Etc. In this
case, GAIA 2000 could be seen as a *premature* attempt to immanentize the
Eschaton, doomed to failure since the true "singularity" (in W.I.T.'s sense,
of a moment from which a new revelation will emerge) occurs December 2012,
whereas GAIA 2000 sets its deadline according to the first calendrical system.
Maybe the world *did* change fundamentally July 26, 1992, and we just
haven't noticed in what respect it did. I *think* that was the day that V/R
Scriptures first went online somewhere.
about GAIA 2000 as `Earth Summit in cyberspace':
USENET is already in a sense an ongoing metaconference on all possible
topics; if GAIA is somehow `Internet-mediated', what might distinguish it from
the ongoing meeting of minds occurring through Usenet all the time?
An important feature of the Event was to be that anyone could reach anyone
else and interact with them in real-time. If `the Event' is to happen
"properly", this state of affairs ought to be reached some time before
December 31 2000, so that people are able to do whatever it is they wish to do
on that occasion. People have to have access, and they have to know that
*something* is coming up on that date.
One possibility is to make December 31 2000 some sort of `deadline for the
realization of desires' concerning the state of the world, much as Greenpeace
has done. This sets up the challenge for people to imagine what the features
of a better world might be, lets them know that millions of others are seeing
(and perhaps rising to) that same challenge, and provides a date on which to
take a look around and see how they've gone.
\qix\biblio
QIX'S RECOMMENDED READING (as at 12 August 1992)
1. *The Fringes of Reason*. a Whole Earth publication
2. Hakim Bey. "T.A.Z."
3. Avital Ronell. "The Telephone Book".
"Crack Wars".
Also interview in RE/Search #13.
4. Barbara Marx Hubbard. "The Evolutionary Journey".
"The Hunger of Eve".
5. Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
Murray Rothbard.
6. Bob Black. "The Abolition of Work".
7. Celia Green. "The Human Evasion".
"The Decline and Fall of Science".
"Advice for Clever Children".
8. Terence McKenna. "Food of the Gods".
"The Archaic Revival".
(with Dennis McKenna) "The Invisible Landscape".
9. Ivan Stang, editor: "The Book of the SubGenius".
"High Weirdness by Mail".
"Three-Fisted Tales of `Bob'".
10. E.E. Rehmus. "The Magician's Dictionary".
11. ? Ravenscroft. "The Mark of the Beast". see also Rudolf Steiner
12. *Principia Discordia*.
13. Jacques Vallee. "Dimensions".
"Confrontations".
14. William Irwin Thompson. "At the Edge of History".
"Passages About Earth".
"Evil and World Order".
"Darkness and Scattered Light".
? "The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light".
? "Pacific Shift".
"Gaia: A Way of Knowing" (ed.)
"Imaginary Landscape".
? "Gaia 2" (ed.)
? "The American Replacement of Nature".
15. Jose Arguelles. "The Transformative Journey".
"The Mayan Factor".
16. Jeremy Griffith. "Free - The End of the Human Condition".
OR "Beyond the Human Condition".
17. Stanislaw Lem. "Imaginary Magnitude".
"A Perfect Vacuum".
"One Human Minute".
"Solaris".
18. Hans Moravec. "Mind Children".
K Eric Drexler. "Engines of Creation", + new book. Foresight Update.
Grant Fjermedal. "The Tomorrow Makers".
Jerry Pournelle. "A Step Farther Out".
19. William Gibson. "Neuromancer", "Burning Chrome".
Bruce Sterling. "Schismatrix", "Crystal Express", "Islands in the Net".
Vernor Vinge, "Marooned in Real Time".
?, "The Hole in the Zero".
20. Olaf Stapledon. "Star Maker".
"Last and First Men".
21. Greg Bear. "Blood Music".
"Eon".
"Queen of Angels".
22. H P Lovecraft (various).
23. Gene Wolfe, "The Book of the New Sun".
24. ? Stelarc.
25. FM-2030 aka FM Esfandiary. "Optimism One".
"Upwingers".
? "Telespheres".
"Are You a Transhuman?"
26. Robert Anton Wilson. "Cosmic Trigger", vols 1 & 2.
"Prometheus Rising".
"Quantum Psychology".
"The New Inquisition".
"Reality is What You Can Get Away With".
"Masks of the Illuminati", "Illuminatus!" trilogy
"Schroedinger's Cat" trilogy
"Coincidance"
"The Illuminati Papers"
27. Aleister Crowley (various). eg "777", "Book of Lies", "Eight Lectures on
Yoga"
? Kenneth Grant.
? G I Gurdjieff.
U G Krishnamurti.
28. Christopher Hyatt. "Undoing Yourself".
"Undoing Yourself Too".
29. Timothy Leary. "Neuropolitique".
"Info-Psychology" (formerly "Exo-Psychology").
"The Politics of Ecstasy".
"The Intelligence Agents".
"The Game of Life".
30. "In Pursuit of VALIS", concerning Philip K Dick.
31. Postmodernism, poststructuralism.
"An Introduction to Superstructuralism".
Foucault, Baudrillard, ? Deleuze and Guattari.
32. Roger Penrose. "The Emperor's New Mind".
Stephen Hawking. "A Brief History of Time".
Richard Feynman. "QED".
Douglas Hofstadter. "Goedel Escher Bach".
F David Peat, "Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything".
"The Philosopher's Stone".
James Gleick, "Chaos".
Barrow and Tipler. "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle".
James Lovelock, books on "Gaia".
33. ? Stan Deyo. "The Cosmic Conspiracy".
and "similar" books.
34. James Joyce. "Ulysses", "Finnegans Wake".
35. Gerald Edelman's trilogy on neural Darwinism.
books by the Churchlands.
36. Nietzsche, ? Schopenhauer.
37. ? Garry Reith, "Neutron Gun".
38. "Gnosis", "MONDO 2000", ? "Now What" (Waves Forest)
39. "State of the World".
Murray Bookchin, "The Ecology of Freedom".
40. R Buckminster Fuller. "Critical Path"
"Grunch of Giants"
41. Kevin Solway (various; available as shareware).
42. The Travelling Scriptures of the Church of V/R.
\qix\cvrmisc
by end of the century gaia2000 may have metamorphosed into something very
specific eg something like the earth summit but carried live to the world
with its participation via the internet and other media, some sort of meeting
of minds meant to bring together the different virtualities
where would alpha and omega fit into such a scheme? the ultimate ao might be a
sort of performance on my part..
try to explain the *origins* of religious texts, occult traditions etc, in
terms of : w.i.t's idea that moderns are literally misreading old cultures;
plus cognitive theory etc, ought to be able to explain where information might
come from, hwo a voice of god might structure itself etc..
g2000 in mold of nwnm or earth summit: look at bmh's syncon ideas
(...ooo000ooo...)
1 august 92.
at present v/r is a bunch of files on tracey's bbs, and a slightly smaller
selection on an ftp site in w.a., + some vague impressions spreading word-
of-mouth. what might it become..?
i see it as primarily inhabiting the internet. whatever other media it might
spread to, the [inter]net is its true home, and a v/r / cafe-net aim is to
bring the net to the streets, so everyone can see it there.
some version of the scriptures may appear at different locations on the net,
and once there is an ugyldig node people will be able to send us responses,
contributions etc. also may serialize scriptures / write other stuff for mag
[eg thru circle].
gaia2000 and alpha/omega. the development of these ideas is still my
responsibilty. gaia2000 i think is becoming perhaps more concrete - might lead
to an internet-mediated 'earth summit in cyberspace', with popular
participation on a global scale.
at present alpha/omega looks like this:
net outline -> album -> novel -> movie -> ... -> EVENT
( -> 1989-2012 ??? )
how might i explain/justify it? `alpha and omega is an attempt to imagine the
nature of a gaia2000-instigated event, which is everything at once, and the
consequences of it [onto 2012]. the reason for ao's progression through
different media is to help bring the 'thing itself' into being, by making it
progressively more and more imaginable...
so the album/novel/etc becomes a seed or propagator of the idea of the
*possibility* of such an event, and the internet the medium of its
"organization". "this book you hold, if you are reading it before dec 31.2000
is one means whereby the possibility of this event is circulated..."
where does the 24part structure etc of a/o fit in? cf vr1: maybe the event
will just be me doing some sort of performance art, so to speak, for the world
i have two particular 24fold "things" to fit in, one is timothy leary's
3x8 circuit model, the other is my 1989 to 2012 progression - 1989 is already
"agreed upon" as having been a pivotal year, 2012 comes from thompson
arguelles mckenna - most convincing thing for me here is timewave zero, if
i am to think that there really is "something" in this i want to see it
make a prediction - i would also like to see a sort of archaeo- or paleo-
cognitive explanation of why the mayan calendar has the structure it does.
one idea was that 24 hr sequence serves as a global initiation - into what?
initiation must be structured - so leary's model would act as a sequence of
24 [neurological tarot, out of game of life - see also uq book on tarot as
sequence of archetypes..]
also idea that 24 yrs '89 to '12 somehow recapitulate for global society the
24 stages - '89 birth of global consciousness, '92 birth of ??what -next
circuit in any case. this of course is "numerology" just as "bad" as
1998 = 3x666 etc. still it would be funny (if it was "true")...
and if it *doesn't* mean anything, what are the ontological implications
of the possibility of such creativity? [ie the fact that it is possible to
stitch together correlations and "make a meaning" from them - what does that
imply about the universe and our relationship to it?]
panspace - where does that fitin???
problem i have with ao / gaia2000 relationship is that the whole 24part
leary/mckenna stuff may be too esoteric and plain WRONG or so much so that
what definitely appears to be the positive potential of gaia2000 [independent
of ao.o] might be lost as a/o details might detract or distract
HOWEVER - what is the gaia2000 idea *independent of ao*? it is the idea of a
global convergence/conference/event etc mediated via the internet. if its
going to happen, it has to happen *at some time*. so may as well set dec 31
2000 as "the date" /"deadline" what have you. it's certainly more likely than
1995, and it's closer than 2012, and it *is* the start of the new
[christian] millennium - which leads to a point requiring further contemplatin
, how will this idea "plaY" IN CULTUREs with other calendars......
if gaia2000 were to lead to an earth summit in cyberspace WHAT WOULD BE ON THE
AGENDA??????? one thing to make up in advance would be a [planetary] "wish
list"..
ie "no hatred wars or poverty", "sustainable development", "anarchy",
"new world order of democratic capitalism", etc....
so it sort of sets the timer for a moment when there could be a massive
mobilization of the world to "do" something/lots of things, if people can
only decide beforehand what it is they want to do..
(...ooo000ooo...)
2 august 1992.
if late 2012 really is the date of the "singularity", what is going to happen
then? i imagined that the world might be transformed, blood-music-fashion,
into a giant computer a la golem xiv, trying to understand the nature of (its
own) existence and the historical process which brought it into being; or that
some means of destroying the universe [false vacuum bubble etc] was developed
and some final battle took place over its activation; or i imagined while
in trafalgar square that perhaps the universe is collapsing [s dali, quoted in
3fisted tales] and so all of space will be "rolled up in a little ball" by
2012, in which case we may have no choice but to try and escape through the
singularity, or something like that; such a scenario might combine janor's
"universal fuck" + leary's fusion with the metaphysiological circuit at the
last stage, + the apocalyptic notion of "time intersection"...
arguelles, mayan factor, predicts "a projection into realms presently
inconceivable", which seems to have something to do with everyone using their
"light bodies" all at once...
apart from my own pattern building [1989-2000; 2001-2012] *why* does 2012 have
this apocalyptic expectation attached to it? for most people, mayan calendar.
but mckenna says he hit on dec 2012 "independently"... i would like to know
more about the process whereby he arrived at that date...
from "archiac revival":
p162 Terence could you identify Philo for us and tell us who he was?
...made it his business to travel around the hellenistic world discussing all
the major cults and religions and cosmogonic theories of the day..
original wandering jew? also sounds like PHILO drummond..
p22 my notion of the posttransition felt experience is that it is a domain
where appropriate activity is the path of least resistance... in this current
realm tao and ego seem impossibly opposed.. in the posttransition world, it's
possible that there will appear to be only ego, and there will actually be
only tao... the kingdom of heaven...
conceivably this is what gaia2000 is trying to bring about? but idea that
2000 represents a failure, owing to forcing the issue, and that 2012 is the
real date when it has to happen...
also sounds like Age of Slack...
what's the role of everyone who's already died in the cosmic scheme of things?
[assuming there is one..]
there is always the posthumanist/existentialist strain - the emptiness of the
cosmos is absolute. pure freedom. hassan i sabbah.
not sure where fm2030 would place his own outlook.
2012 as start of age of maat - equilibrium.
texts are virtualities through which one can 'see' new or old worlds;
subgenius represents a reality which one might 'enter into' [crossing the
boundary into the new form, r.a.w's schrodinger's cat]; gaia2000 is an attempt
to stitch virtualities together????? community of shattered egos
the vacant horror of existence [see above] - both ronell. full of phrases like
these.
*
what is relationship between imagination, will, reality? eg idea that ufo's
are 'created' by unconscious psychokinetic wish-fulfilment. suppose such a
thing is possible, and a striebertype alien/visitor is created, is the visitor
selfaware? if so where does it think it came from?
each person sees 3d space from a different pointofview in a very mundane
sense - i think i am here, that guy typing off to the left sees *his* screen
in front of himself, etc. how do these 3d virtualities relate to the
[hypothetical] 3d reality? is it possible to have a reality model which
somehow represents all the 3d virtualities & if so is there any need to
postulate a 3d reality as well, independent of observers with 3d virtualities?
*
even though i am not working at a job or at a school/uni, i feel as if i spend
too much time doing things i would rather not be doing, or rather that i am
not doing some things i would like to be. i feel primary restriction on this
second class of things is money, so simplest thing would be to make v/r
partly commercial and say, by buying our journal/whatever you help to pay for
us to do certain things [buy books, interview various individuals, etc]
ok. could make one aim of v/r publication "expansion of all our
virtualities." we at v/r have heard of certain things, individuals etc.. who
we cannot easily reach. money will help us eg to contact terence mckenna and
ask him, *when* did you decide on dec 2012 as date for immanentizing the
eschaton? and will help us get a copy of timewave zero.
interview celia green, etc.
*
it seems to me that global anarchy could be fairly "safe" if everyone knew it
was coming...so to speak. how could the coming of anarchy be negotiated or
eased into play? ao-type strategy [anticipates the antipation of the anticip-
ation of the real thing] + ever larger and more frequent TAZs [culminating in
a PAZ]...permanent autonomous zone...
what does a.o the event have to do with transition from leary's 1st 4 to 2nd 4
circuits? gaia2000 is supposed to mark end of dominator culture end of
hierarchies etc etc all of which rely on existence of domesticated primates
activation of 5th circuit appears to amount to dedomestication, so end of
dec 31 2000 could lead to "hippification" of the planetary population :)...
i have viewed online scriptures of v/r as a place where people might post
crazy thoughts etc and certainly much of it has this interesting but
discordant appearance, but there will have to be some degree of stitching
together also at some point, picking and choosing of parts to develop and
emphasize.. chaotic proliferation followed by weeding...
archaic revival p215
I guess I'm a soft Dark Ager. I think there will be a mild Dark Age. I don't
think it will be anything like the dark ages that lasted a thousand years; I
think it will last more like five years and will be a time of economic
retraction, religious fundamentalism, retreat into closed communities by
certain segments of the society, feudal warfare among minor states, resource
scarcity, and this sort of thing. But I think it will give way in the late
nineties to the global future that we're all yearning for, and then there will
be basically a fifteen-year period where all these things are drawn together
with progressively greater and greater sophistication, much in the way that
modern science and philosophies have grown with greater and greater
sophistication in a single direction since the Renaissance. Sometime around
the end of 2012 all of this will be boiled down into a kind of alchemical
distillation of the historical experience that will be a doorway into the
life of the imagination.
2012-15=1997,date of SubGenius takeover according to "dateline for dominance"
;)
what is the attraction of the "nothing matters" school of thought? it means
you can take all the time you want to, since it's all futile in the long run..
what is the relationship between creation and destruction? stabilities seem
to be destroyed to make way for new complexities?
(...ooo000ooo...)
3 august 1992.
re terence mck's claim that ayahuasca promotes group telepathic experiences:
he says one person can leave off describing the scene being beheld and another
will take it up "Everyone is seeing the same thing!" what might be happening
here is that ayahuasca promotes synaesthesia [the crossing of the senses -
whatever that feels like] - and since everyone is hearing the same thing,
and seeing what they hear [this is the synesthetic effect], then it is as if
telepathy is occurring - but it must be mediated by hearing and then the drug,
presumably.
what's the point of suicidal openness, or doing things "in public" [eg airing
strange thoughts on the net etc]? the point is to try to force the rate of
change by pioneering the expression of certain thoughts or the performance of
certain actions. if someone is *seen* to do something for the first time, it
then becomes more imaginable to others that they themselves could express
their true feelings or act on their true desires. of course, this process of
gradual pioneering may lead in directions that one judges undesirable - eg
war, serial murder have both become "familiar".
\qix\plasmate
13-11-92 qut linklab 2.21am etc. [using qedit for once!]
written only a few hrs after 121192, nickiu and kelly long gone [an hour ago?]
have just been looking at disk b, where i have the relatively small no.
of gavinfiles that i have actually transfered to disk thus far.
3 major groupings: net fiend - rez - scott. [+other stuff like otis, cog,
futfaq] i am thinking in terms of trying to bring together some of the
virtual worlds i have explored so far, or whatever i am to call them.
there's mine - netfiend + a.o - which i presume i will make available in
the form of qixbio, and then a.o itself; there's general leri-dialog &
in particular rez - leri will probably become a supercategory, according
to various threads & leri also includes scotto with whom i haven't talked
as much as rez; and gerold pirl, and mike gourlay.. [& solan@no?]; and then
there's private correspondence with scott. also correspondence with lizi,
although he did make his public domain note so, point is, if at some future
stage i was to try to 'share' notes or resources or something, scott's are
the ones that would require mopst consultation [with him] since they are
email. i need a good name for the different net affinity groups, meme-
clusters etc that exist, and which i am trying to involve in some sort of
symbiotic relationship or other form of communication. take this to
leri-l? mindmelds?? mindfields? maybe memes aren't alive, but we need
some other concept for this idea of a groupmind sort of thing which can be
considered semiautonomous. something with 'net' and or 'cog' in its name.
cf cyborg. netorg? cognet? netmeld? maybe there's a word already in the
lerifaq. metamind. cognitive domain. netamind? i'll call them domains for the
moment. domains i know of, which i want to bring into visible contact:
mitch-scott
jeremy-scott
mitch-lizi
mitch-rez (a subdomain of leri)
and there seems to be something on alt.satanism / alt.destroy.the.earth
involving corleyj/locklin/lizi/perhaps semhaza/and i wonder if tagi is a
part of this? find out this morning maybe. should add alt.horror.cthulhu
to the above list. and judex to the list of names. it's a small world
after all.
of the people i've spoken with a bit, scott definitely seems to have the
biggest agenda, although i'm still not in the full picture. know next to
nothing about tagi and semhaza.
so, as far as 'bringing together in one place' what i've already mentioned
goes: if jeremy & scott were to join leri, that would potentially make
jermey-mitch-scott triangle a subdomain of leri ie it could be conducted
within the 'space of visibility' that leri offers. so leri provides the
advantage of a 'space' of sorts where such things can be discussed, but has
the disadvantage that any discussion there is 'exposed' by the presence of
so many minds and so many other threads.
[domain concept i want to add before i forget to record it: idea that each
person *in RL* is a potential source of 'leaks' in the integrity of a domain
[when considered in its excluding aspect, ie as a place that is not
universally accessible to inspection], eg i show things to fellow elder gods,
blab to flatmates or people like caroline&co about aspects of life on the
net, etc; and regionally each of us is in a similar situation, ie scott in
mass, leri people in iowa, etc. is juxlus ever going to do his leri-map?]
another thing with leri: magick/occult, cthulhoid/thelemite topics are not
high profile at present, although they pop up occasionally, eg daath, "bob",
& scotto in discussing tremendum and terence mckenna mentions tibetan buddhism
& shamanism. contrast here is with the alt.horror.cthulhu/alt.satanism axis,
a lot of the traffic of which i think would be along such lines. these
topics would probably alienate some of the leri people who may have reasonable
drug experience but are relatively ignorant of these conceptual systems. [so
what is under consideration here is the future consequence of an 'importation'
of ?'occult' memes into leri discussion.
* * * * *
back from a toilet trip. it would be germane to now note that i am almost
certainly going to forward this to scott somehow, & perhaps others mentioned;
& it would also be appropriate to recall the june/july posting i made shortly
after returning from my travels overseas, which listed perhaps 12 groups
which were to be brought together... i shall dig around a bit and see if i
have a reough copy of the text anywhere on disk...
ok, in transcribing my 'travel diary' i got as far as iowa, which means i have
the draft text of the usenet posting [though not the actual final text] & not
the groups that i listed, but i can probably remember those. this is what i
wrote while traveling, by way of trying to create the conditions for these
groups to come together [in a joking-serious tone] & as a way of introducing
v/r... [just in my sig, mentioned v/r..]
Planet Earth is only a few months away from two historic events (although they
may turn out to be historic *non*-events). One is the Earth Summit, taking
place in Rio de Janeiro in the first two weeks of June, at which the
"powerbrokers" and would-be powerbrokers of the world shall meet for the UN
Conference on Environment and Development, ostensibly to lay the ground rules
for global governance in the '90s. I read in a newspaper that Maurice Strong,
who I think is a (former?) high-ranking UN bureaucrat whose brainchild the
Summit is, wants it to be "a success or a dramatic failure". So if the outcome
of the Summit is not enough as far as its UN organizers are concerned, they
may somehow appeal to the peoples of the world (eg through CNN), bypassing
governments, saying "Your rulers have failed you..."
The other event is more obscure as yet: the (predicted) `Time Shift' of July
26. Supposed to be the climax of a 5-year period of change initiated by the
Harmonic Convergence of 1987, after the Time Shift `telepathy will be the
norm', and money, drugs and oil will somehow become useless, according to Jose
Arguelles' exposition of the Mayan paradigm he expects to replace
`materialism'. If all of this happens, it will obviously be a momentous event;
if it doesn't happen, it will still be important, since it will be the first
failure of a millennial-style prediction to which are attached the hopes of
people _all_over_ the planet.
So two (non)-events are looming: between them they may spell the end of
politics and religion as we have known them. In such times we need to pool
all our intelligence, in order to work out what the hell is going on. To this
end I nominate the following individuals and groups as Alternative World
Overlords. I say unto you, readers of the groups of the "alt" hierarchy,
between them these people are the brain-trust of our species: they *must* be
brought together in dialogue or conflict or something; or else our world may
descend into the Ugyldig from whence it sprang.
and the groups/people would have been:
avital ronell
barbara marx hubbard
upwingers [fm2030]
foresight institute [k eric drexler]
falcon press [wilson leary hyatt]
stanislaw lem
celia green [institute for psychophysical research]
jeremy griffith [foundation for humanity's adulthood]
lindisfarne [william irwin thompson]
original cyberpunks [gibson sterling etc]
subgenius foundation
terence mckenna
i'm pretty sure there were only 12.
so if i were to stick to this list for the moment ['biblio' is a bigger & much
more complex version of the same thing], how am i going by way of finding
internet links to these RL 'domains'?
avital ronell -> pmc-list, pmc-talk. just starting to explore this one but
she's on the editorial board.
barbara marx hubbard -> ??? haven't seen her mentioned anywhere, haven't
pursued it.
upwingers -> ? i am *sure* fm would be on the net somewhere, but have yet
to find where. extropians is definitely the closest we come to an
'upwingers' group or list
foresight institute -> pretty much as above, except sci.nanotech is a
usenet focus.
wilson/leary/hyatt -> ?? leri-l. wilson mentioned in alt.satanism faq. and
'where' was wilson.on.cis 'recorded'? leary alleged to lead discussions
on the well sometimes. hyatt introduces the whole thelemite / western
tradition meme-complex, so alt.magick.
stanislaw lem -> ??? haven't tried. rec.arts.books? comp.ai? in a sense the
cyberpunks are, finally, the 'movement' exploring some of lem's themes,
but lem has a different approach, & other concerns [including surprisingly
subgenius-like ones at times].
celia green -> ??? no sign of her either and haven't really tried.
philosophy groups? alt.paranormal?? + physics connection.
jeremy griffith -> ??? even more unknown. an up-and-coming influence
compared to all these other people. more an oz task for me - which
suggests interesting future encounters between his memes and kevin
solway's.
lindisfarne -> this one is just getting underway with my recent xposted
inquiry. john mccarthy made a brief reply, one other guy is reading a
w.i.t. book, and guy in email is attending a n.y. 'symposium' _right_now_.
lindisfarne would already appear to be a sort of global intellectual
fellowship, so to a great degree thompson has been trying to bring minds
together in a similar fashion.
original cyberpunks -> well, alt.cyberpunk. bruces@well.sf.ca.us is most
visible net connection. what is mike@highlite.uucp involved with?
andy hawks, future-culture. scream baby seems to have lots of connections.
subgenius foundation -> if this is taken to refer to 'free' or 'weird'
religions in general then these are a dime a dozen on the net - subgenius,
discordian, church of spam, v/r, kibology, etc. [i would be interested to
have a sort of map of the relationships between kibo, mdw, sramming etc,
since they are all in communication thru email as well as on the net, no
doubt. kibology i think hasnt got the intellectual substance of anything
else here, but it is important within usenet as a highly visible cultural
icon of sorts - it is unique in that respect. this is a future factor.] in
terms of network of online subgenii, online operation mindfucks, corleyj
is starting one of the latter, & perhaps subgenius-l is the closest to a
seriously organized subg grouping (and it's just like a smaller
alt.slack). HOWEVER, if we talk actual SubGenius FOUNDATION - ie the real
organization - not sure about their degree of online participation. two
leads: janor h. on mars bbs last year, and phenomicon people - in
particular the guy who seems to know 'swinging love corpses'.
terence mckenna -> LERI-L. no other candidate needed. leri-l encompasses
much more than mckenna, but it is certainly the only mckenna forum on the
net, and a very well-informed one at that.
so if i'm talking bringing domains together OR at least constructing a picture
of their *existing* relationships so that everyone can become aware of what
ALREADY EXISTS, what happens if i have a go at stitching together all the
netstuff listed above? !...
PMC-TALK, Extropians/sci.nanotech, leri-l, alt.magick/alt/satanism,
alt.cyberpunk, scream-baby/future-culture, subgenius-l. that's not
comprehensive, but it's already a pretty wild mix. so what would i be trying
to achieve by bringing these different domains into visible contact? to
facilitate memetic crossover, to assist in the birth of a synthesis. they are
already crossing over in my head and in the heads of others, in a somewhat
chaotic fashion; but i have only finite resources & critical and creative
capacities; by distributing - in a computational sense - the 'load', there is
a better chance of coming up with something productive.
the crossover of domains here is a quantum leap up from what i was discussing
before, as i was mostly thinking of connections between groups of 2 or 3, and
my only 'semipublic' domain was leri-l, whereas in the list that begins this
paragraph there are 7+ such 'very leaky' domains. there is a problem here of
dissipation of purpose. in my original list i was trying to bring together in
one place all the most interesting/provocative thoughts that i had
encountered, to see what was born of their commingling, beyond confusion and
wonder. such comminglings, although not of precisely the same domains, are
already happening on leri, but the unstructured nature of it leads me & i
suspect most or all people to switch off to at least half of it - tune out
from threads which are too far away from their present concerns. as a result
there is a certain amount of dissipation, i think - ie even if something new
comes of a dialogue on a certain topic, it only occasionally has leri-wide
ramifications.
[a parenthetical addition: i have not mentioned theoretical physics or
dynamical systems theory yet, and yet these two bodies of concepts - probably
better-defined than any i have mentioned so far - ought to be part of the
memetic stew i wish to brew as well. support comes from the recent thread on
leri associating the two - it's not just my fondness for these topics which
makes them relative to Whatever It Is i'm working towards here.
further note: jbaez is an interesting person. see him mostly in sci.physics
and sci.math, but he shows up regularly in alt.drugs and posted about voynich
ms. to alt.horror.cthulhu, so his conceptual world is definitely broad...
so someone else to try to involve, in something?]
i think it's time i introduced an element of purpose here. i am hoping not
merely to create a map of existing relationships, but to facilitate the birth
of something new - new ideas and perhaps a new world. to use the language of
memes and meme-complexes for a moment, one way to look at it would be to
conceive of the end-result as a meme-scheme [in hofstadter's sense of paradigm
framework etc] which can encompass and supersede [at the absolute level] those
that exist now. i want to connect this to philip dick's notion of a
"plasmate", a living body of information which can pass from a text into a
mind which will act as its host; the resultant is a "homoplasmate" in dick's
jargon, a human who is a host for the information. dick's plasmate had to do
with his idea of what esoteric christianity is about, i think, whereas it
seems to me that (say) extropian ideas would be a component of a late20thc
plasmate, so i can't say that "my" plasmate and his would be the same, but the
metaphor of a LIVING BODY OF INFORMATION that spreads through different media
[the meme/virus analogy] is a useful one.
ok, so a concise restatement? by bringing about this memetic crossover - which
at present is a mostly chaotic process which at times hints at great things to
come - i hope to give birth to a plasmate which will circulate throughout the
noosphere, transforming human perceptions and thus human actions.
why would i want to transform human actions? because it seems to me that the
world we have now is 'radically unsatisfactory [because]...the human condition
is a dump.' [bruces] this is the primary consideration, we are finite and
ignorant, and it is my impression that people hide from things, choose
frivolous and relatively purposeless pursuits, because they have accepted that
they will always be thus. whereas the whole notion of the SINGULARITY suggests
something quite different: that we are at a unique historical juncture, in
which there is an opportunity, with luck and hard work, to escape the
historical human condition - to be transformed both 'physically' and
'existentially', for want of better terms. but at the same time there are all
sorts of uncertainties and possible dangers, the possibility of error both in
a practical and an intellectual sense - the wrong step might be taken, or we
might have an incorrect worldview - which is why i insist on all these
ingredients.
ok, to take another leap and relate this to 'alpha and omega': if i really
hurry, could the plasmate, or a proto-version of it, be born before the year
is out, or at some point in the very near future? because this could be a new
statement of what i am trying to do with a.o specifically: make it the textual
vehicle of the plasmate [as the book of the subgenius is supposed to be]. the
book would point beyond itself in two ways: to the later a.o forms [movie,
event], but also to the internet itself, and the sea of information therein
which could not be touched upon in a single text. thus a text like this, even
if it were not excerpted and made part of the canonical a.o, could implicitly
be a part of it in the sense that it is a text closely related to the Final
Draft.
this has been a very interesting exercise.
...
ok, have just been scanning this text, and i think it would go well, not in
a.o, since this is all stil inchoate whereas a.o is meant to be the Real
Thing, but in this hypothetical qixbio that i might make available by ftp.
recent ingredients might include:
semper story of my travels
diary of a net fiend [the drug aspect of my life]
conspiracy posting and lizi's response
this file
and other ingredients, no doubt. [chart of time from leri-l]
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
i also want to note that as i was writing out the list before, of internet
correlates to my list of 12 RL 'domains', that i felt a slightly fearful/
fascinating apprehension of the *reality* of this, the irreversible and
unpredictable nature of bringing them together. played out on a global
scale, this of course is a familiar worry to me; in trying to immanentize
the eschaton, what if you fuck up and bring about the Bad version rather
than the Good one? [debates about Good and Bad put aside for the moment.]
---------------------------------------
ok, who do i send this to? at this stage i think only scott [@titan] and
rez, although certainly scotto [@leri] would understand what it was about,
since he's seen all my postings to leri-l - i just think rez because he's the
one i was actually debating the merits of a book with, etc. probably quite a
few leri people know enough to work out what i'm talking about here, so
perhaps this whole thing might get posted to leri at some stage, or a
streamlined version or something. i'll have to send scott l. a copy of the
leri "chart of time" where i expounded a.o so he knows what i'm talking about
re the idea of a book, and maybe chart of time & this document together could
serve to introduce the idea to [certain!] people not on leri.
probably include some form of the lerifaq file as well, just to explain
singularity etc.
-------------------
after another break [now 4am], looking ahead. let us suppose that the a.o
*structure* in time,
book -> movie -> event - 24 hrs at the end of 2000
actually happens, and provides a sort of framework within which whatever
the final memetic mix is, propagates. how prominent will we, as individuals
- myself, scott, rez, etc - be in whatever historical events occur during
2000? might one of us end up being a new leary or mckenna, for example? could
someone involved in this enterprise / the leri enterprise / whatever it turns
into, have some degree of 'secular' power ie political influence or privilege,
lots of money, high managerial position? this is relevant to me even on the
level of writing fiction, because i need to have some idea of how "prominent"
the people who initiate such a process are by the time it is reaching its
culmination.
in terms of people who have a place in existing institutions, when i think
of my previous lists i think extropians and [to a lesser degree] pmc (a lesser
degree because the humanities are simply not as much of a cultural influence
as science and technology). there may well be extropians or
extropian-sympathetic people on advisory councils to the american government,
u.n. etc by 2000, and if extropian memes are a major component of the
plasmate [remember, plasmate denotes the final body of memes that will
propagate together - there is an assumption that there will be a somehow
harmonious hybrid of all this and more] then any such 'high-up' extropian may
well know about & be influenced by the 'weirder' aspects as well.
in terms of people from my list of RL domains, barbara marx hubbard has
thought a lot about running for president, so she may well be a significant
figure by the time the real events roll around. fm also, owing to his history
of involvement with the un.
the others could perhaps become culturally influential - eg mckenna being
sampled by the shamen, william gibson becoming a household name, etc. in a
sense what i'm asking here is, *who will be* the individuals who will embody
some of these ideas as far as pop culture is concerned? it seems to me that
for an idea to circulate there's got to be someone
who is its representative
in the world of humanity. since drexler, ronell etc are already public
figures, the question is already answered with respect to *their* ideas; but
assuming that something genuinely novel comes of this crossover process i've
been hyping, who will stand for that? i think that as far as the idea of
'alpha and omega' the book etc. itself, i have to take full credit/blame
there, if i'm going to be the damn author [unless it assumes some
collaborative form which i find presently unimaginable, seeing how
*individual* a vision it still is] ; but as far as reality goes, the most that
a.o would do is set a deadline and a sort of temporal structure for this
hypothetical Event at the end of the century - the content & outcome would NOT
follow any script - i'm not that smart. that's why i have envisioned the
ending of a.o as being a big question mark, so to speak, saying 'you have now
had certain possibilities opened to you, you know how much time remains - what
do you do now....?' but that question mark will not last past dec 31, 2000.
either the whole thing doesnt take off, in which case i'm left looking for
another avenue, or it does and it assumes a definite form and outcome on that
date. possible forms might be, say
a global extropian-type movement
a global green/back-to-nature movement
[or some odd combination of these]
a mystical, new-agey sort of transcendence - cf hopi indian prophecies
a 'cthulhoid apocalypse' [eg the star beings come to devour our souls]
[these are the extremes of the 'occult' scenario, so to speak]
global love peace and harmony [ie only 'social transcendence']
global despair and destruction - intentional self-annihilation
[a 'punk apocalypse' - the extremes of ?social change]
business as usual - muddling through, nothing in particular happens.
everyone goes back to work the next day.
mass enlightenment - the Truth is communicated to everyone - global
enlightenment [distinguishable from global happiness] {but would this
Truth be more like green or griffith?}
in all of those different events the 'key players' would be different sorts of
people - in some politicians would be pivotal, in others gurus, in others
technicians of different sorts, etc.
i have gone a bit off track from my intent, which was to ask, 'which of
"us", now - people "we" know personally on the net - could end up a cultural
icon, world politician etc?' but i have no particular answers.
but the point is, that if something resembling this course of events does
happen, we, or some of 'us', may find ourselves in crucial positions.
----------------------------
a final thought: written half an hour later, after going for a walk thinking
& eating - one of my goals is the elimination of all fear between people,
especially fear of divulgence of information. i have written elsewhere about
the idea that when one person performs an action, it makes it more thinkable
for others to do the same, and that this is how (eg) openness about sex,
drugs, politics, religion etc has progressed, in steps taken by pioneers
that were then popularized by others. it was to this end that i have wanted
to be open on the internet in particular - thus i have imagined making
diaries available via ftp, & the like. it occurs to me that perhaps kibo was
the first person to be completely free in this sense - the first not to
"hide his shining star" - in which case kibology really may be the way of
life in the 21st century! ie kibo was the first to take a step which the mass
of humanity will later follow, in the global information culture of the
future. (and in what fashion could the first person to take such a step, do
such a thing, other than as an enormous joke? to do it with earnest intentions
- "i'm going to tell the world all about myself because i want to set an
example of openness etc" - i don't think would work; the negative reaction
would be too much.) kibo may be just as important as he makes himself out to
be.
\qix\nov92\181192
18-11-92 wednesday morning 4 am link lab.raining outside & i'm stuck here.
what are major recent events? on sunday went to TISEA in afternoon, was
fairly interesting; then in evening got amilings from loompanics and
waves forest,which i thought was better still.
yesterday and today i havebeen at uq rather than griffith..heard from lupo
again after thinking he'd disappeared. leri-l fairly quiet lately ,it's as
if everyone has withdrawn from the frenzy of trying to follow everything a
few weeks back.
i have been wondering lately,whether i'm still learning, because at times it
felt as if everything purposeful i was doing on the net was in order to
spread memes i already know about,rather than learn of new ones. but then i
look at a.o - the draft miniversion saved 9 ?oct i think - and i think, gee
thatwas a long time ago. what has happened, basically since the compilation
of high weirdness by email, is that i am linked into the internet in a
really new way, to a degree that hasnt happened before, even when i was
regularly bbs'ing. the internet [the "CyberVoid"] is now the ...thing...
into which i am pouring most of my efforts,and out of which various
responses return to me.
with most of my communicating being espeak,my use of the language is
changing very swiftly. also the change in my thoughts that i had noticed,
that so many ofmy thoughts had to do with online activities and people.
this is a whole universe i am entering here. or i am entering into a new
intellectualrelationship with the same universe,by becoming part of a
domain in which all action involves interaction. my intelligence and
knowledge is potentially augmented by the net,both as a form of
accelerated experience and as a superresource made upof millions of other
networked humans.
it is interesting: eventually i will cut back on net use, introduce some
sort of regularity and discipline to what i do on the net, whereas at the
moment it is all chaos interspersed with spurts of purpose which leadto
the completion of tasks at hand. by formulating a precise relationship
between myself&the net- "i will readthese groups, answer this mail, complete
this projectetc" - i make it easier to act purposively with regards to the
net but i fallbehind in the growth of myimplicit knowledge of what's going on
on the fringes.[although it is questionable that a lotof that info is really
worth knowing anyway. eg is it important to be in on every injoke from
talk.bizarre to alt.peeves?]
high weirdness by email could be seen as my portrait of the net,or the net
as i encounter it given the choices i make. eg the emphasis on alt topics.
the 'plasmate' diary entry was a start of a step in the next direction...
yes, ok,i am starting to conceive of phases to my recent intensive times
on the net, which started with getting email and newsposting privileges.
[how was it that i first heardof nyx?] the progressive development (of
important new steps) was something like nyx, future-culture, leri-l,
then lots and lots ofmailing lists,and all this culminated in high weirdness
by email,which is the work of amind going in a dozen different directions.
phase two is one of 'rconvergence' and will involve re-relating things and
if necessary PRIORITIZING [rez'sfavourite word].
<just made a quick toilet trip, during which it occurred to me that phase ?3
- getting aheadof myself here -must involve linking up my FleshAcquaintances
with the net in general.i havetalked about bringing the net to ;'the masses'
etc but to the extent to which i am trying to bring computers to non-CS
people, it is specific people,my friends who i want to have access to the
net world.. so this i hope will come of cafenet,and perhaps l's house of
the happy hobbit. thus also might my net circles encounter my brisbane ones.>
the culmination of phase 3 will most likely be alpha.omega the ?usenet post/
net-trip; and in terms of the development of a.o the new step will be the
full integration of ...??? the reality of internet intothe picture.ie i am
linking it [the novel] up with a vastly complex entity whose specificities
i havetrulybeen learning only in the past month.
i'm now going to have a go at constructing a net chronology for my
activities of the past month and a bit, so i can get a clearer perspective on
what'sbeen going on.
...DONE! an overview from september to mid-november:
10 Sep - 1 Jan deadline
18 Sep - ftp'd hacker mags - idea that ao.post not wholly 'live'
23 Sep - spending time on BBS's from QUT
27 Sep - 4-disk series
1 Oct - 'checking' Samba
2 Oct - 'try to get on to FutureCulture'
3 Oct - regularly copying items from QUTNews - compiling ao.post
8 Oct - NEW HOME
9 Oct - Samba working - 4 brief newsposts
12 Oct - V/R letterhead
14 Oct - Posted re High W b E - using Macs (at commerce,i presume)
15 Oct - FUTFAQ, OTIS
[somewhere in here,T16]
21 Oct (NOW ON NYX) - ANTHLAL correspondence - on extropians, leri-l
24 Oct - UQcom, samba wiped everything
1 Nov - have done H W b E, Diary of a N F, alt.necromicon FAQ, ScottL corr
lists: obj, extr, leri, anarchy, subg, fut
thinking of qix-l; scott, rez, maybe mike wiik and lizi as 'future partners'
6 Nov - busted at UQcom -> G.U.. Con to DestEarth,singularity threads.
'my heartis with leri'. would have posted CFDalt.qixnews soon after
12 Nov - K&N first look at News - W I T mail, jeremy meets GOO
13 Nov - PLASMATE, qixbio
17/18 Nov - this very moment NOW
so i have been on nyx for maybe one month. and nyx has been the truly *crucial*
factor in being able to do anything at all on the broader net eg contribute to
leri,assemble hwbe. [it's funny how similar this is to the end of last year,
with a rush of change, only there the ?facilitator was acid rather than the
net.] i am now at a point where it really is appropriate to focus consciously
on some specific tasks. my main tangent at present would appear to be the
singularity essay for extropians/leri - making that point; watching for a
while for thompson/green feedback;and getting waves forest out on the net.
a little further down the track i might want to have as much of my other
'essential reading' online as possible. thus finding a scanner becoming more
and more urgent.once it'sthere online it can be referred to and cannibalized
by future etexts. also realistically i think within a month the leri-l
institute shouldhave a report on timewave zero,so that will start to come
into place. so 3 items: singularity, getting more texts 'out there', and
TWZ.oh! and knot theory/interiority etc as well. and a newsgroup with
richard raby - it would be much easier for me,at least to keep track of
my usenet traffic thatway,i think that was the ultimate motive for
alt.qixnews, so all my different threadswould be visibly together in at
least _one_place.
also start assembling canonical texts for qixbio. i guess this will be one
of them.
OK,rain is lighter and so is sky and i may go soon [5.45 am]. a final note:
i think the most appropiate place for all this stuff would be volume 2
[volume 3?] of the travelling scriptures. so it would naturally encompass
semper
netfiend
lizicon
131192 [plasmate]
181192 [thisfile]
(after all, "semper" is already there). plus qix92.not and qixatuq.not for
additional background info. i am a bit concerned at taking over the church
of v/r entirely for my own purposes, or flooding the scriptures with what
i've written, but i don'tthink lara will mind since she wants them to grow,
etc. if this proposed addition happens, though.. it is interesting to think
what the next one will bring, since from here my main projects are completing
the next version of high weirdness by email,and then the usenet version of
alpha and omega.. both of which are *related* to scripture, but neither of
which can actually be incorporated directly intom scripture, i think.
which means thatthe *next* volume will most likely be the work of abulafia
pippin & co, a few months from now when they've read all this & all sorts of
things may have happened.who knows what it will be by then?
******* EARLY CAFENET MATERIAL *********
Note: what follows are for the most part Pippin's notes, drafts of various
documents related to the CafeNet enterprise, etc. As of this writing I have
been busy with my activity on the net (see above) & have not at all been
involved with the progress of CafeNet; but Pippin has graciously lent me her
notes, & I hereby transcribe them in the hope that they may assist and inspire
someone in some other part of the world who wishes to `bring the Internet to
the street'. -Qix
ORIGINAL NOTES
\pippin\cafe1
Mitchell's dream is to bring the Internet to the people in the street.
We, the Church of V\R and Gaia 2000, propose CafeNet, a network of computers
in coffee shops across Brisbane, and eventually, across Australia. In its
final stage, CafeNet will provide full Internet access comparable to
Compuserve or Aarnet for people not associated with an institution and who do
not have lots of money.
We propose stages of development for CafeNet.
Stage 1.
This will involve one stand-alone computer, in a popular cofee shop. The
computer will be a 386 or a 486. A 386 can be purchased for $1000. The 386
will be the file server, and it will have about 5 terminals attached to it.
This will give users the first taste of real-time contact over the computer
medium.
Users can leave messages for each other or contribute to an electronic
forum.
A modem would give outside computer owners an opportunity to ring up the
coffee shop and contribute or talk to the coffee shop users.
Stage 2.
We will then introduce FidoNet to the coffee shop. FidoNet will give Cafe
users the opportunity to participate in international conferences and to send
and receive international mail. Users would probably have to pay for this,
about $35 per year.
or UUCP could be used for a Newsfeed and International Mail. This will cost
$1000 per year from UQ. I *think( FidoNet will be easier to organize.
if FidoNet is used, another modem, 144K, should be purchased. These canbe
purchased from Netcomm for $6-- if Netcomm know that it is for a BBS.
E-mail can be sued to "sell" the Cafe to business. Overnight mail. Faster
than airmali, but not faster than fax.
Stage 3.
This stage could be interchanged with Stage 2.
Virtual Cafes will be set up in other coffee shops. 5 terminals, preferably,
another modem for outside users and a file server for each. The file servers
will be connected via 2 multiplexers, $1000 for a good one, or over ISDN (?)
cabling. This can be connected for $600.
This will enable users in different cafes to talk to each other in real
time.
This is when CafeNet will be a proper Network.
Cafe Fileservers can be converted to UNIX or a UNIX Clone to make them more
compatible for the Internet.
A MUD would make things more interesting.
Stage 4.
Virtual cafes will spread to otehr cities.
But how would they be connected?
Stage 5.
Connect CafeNet to the Internet.
We don't know how we will do this either. Possibly via FalNet who connect
Cmopuserve, but we would charge users a yearly rate and ont an hourly rate.
Welcome to CafeNet Press F1 for help.
SOME NOTES
write letters to hardware companies to grovel for stuff in exchange for
advertising "your hardware will be seen by a large range of people..."
CPU manufacturers, modem makers, hard disk makers, LCD manuf's.
Digital, Sun, Western, Apple, HP, Motorola, Silicon Graphics, NeXT,
Commodore 3 or 4000, Compaq, IBM
* Picture terminal in a coffee shop
* lo-tech definition of CafeNet (subscribers)
* Physical Liabilities ie computers, who owns them; electricity arrangement;
extra phones
* Benefits. Why you should allow these things in your shop. Disadvantages.
Getting rid of people.
Leave client alone.
It is going to become a martyr.
Have a bean.
* Questionnaire
* Flyer
- explaining CafeNet
* Bound Booklet
- explaining CafeNet
- mechanics
* letters for hardware firms
DRAFT INTRODUCTION TO CAFENET
Your lunch break arrives. After briefly tidying up, you head for the door.
Your favourite coffee shop beckons so you enter looking for a strong cup of
fresh coffee, a sandwich and a chance to relax with all thoughts of work far
behind. The waiter chats with you briefly when you order and then you sit
down, savouring the rich aroma of the coffee. Your attention starts wandering
around the room until you notice a computer placed discreetly against a wall
with a banner:
"Welcome to CafeNet"
displayed over an intriguing animated background.
Perhaps at this point your interest is pricked. Pull it toward you. Connect
to CafeNet. Connect to a network of people around Brisbane, around Australia
and around the world. From here you can find information and poinions of any
topic under the sun. You can join in and air your views in an electronic forum
where your voice matters no less than anyone else's. Meet people who share
your opinions. Discover the people who disagree and why. Continue discussions
privately with electronic mail. Leave messages for others. "Talk" to friends
who are connected to CafeNet simultaneously. Join in interactive games with
possibly dozens of other people at once. There are many possibilities, but the
bottom line is it can be a lot of fun if you get involved.
Find out how it feels to be connected to a dynamic and diverse network of
people, information and imagination. The larger network of CafeNet is but a
small part beckons you from the farthest corners of the world. In the New Year
you will be able to broaden your horizons and join this chaotic mass of
humanity.
DRAFT CAFENET QUESTIONNAIRE (for the purposes of market research)
CafeNet is a proposed small business intending to provide communications
services using electronic data links. These services are electronic mail
around the world (overnight), local and worldwide discussion forums,
information services, multiple player games and electronic "chatting".
This questionnaire is to determine whether the people of Brisbane would sue
these services.
1) Would you be interested in these services?
2) If so, would you pay 10, 25, 50 or ___ dollars as a yearly subscription
fee (with no additional costs) for these services?
3) Where would you find it conventient to use these services? eg a library,
coffee shop, nite club, pinball parlour
4) Would you sue these services in a coffee shop?
5) If you are not interested in these services is it because:
a) these services are already provided by someone else
If they are, who are they and what services do they provide?
b) they simply hold no interest for you
c) computers make you uncomfortable
d) none of the above
Thank you for your time.
DRAFT CAFENET BLURB FOR AROMAS (Brisbane coffee shop)
Imagine a man walking into Aromas. He sits down and looks across the table,
and sees a computer staring back. He thikns that a coffee shop is a strange
plave to find a cmoputer. He is intrigued though, and slides over the seat to
investigate.
What is CafeNet?
CafeNet is a proposed network of computers in coffee shops across Brisbane.
CafeNet will provide an electronic mail service, discussion groups, and "chat"
system, an information service, and multiple player games. CafeNet will be
part of the greater global network of cmoputers called the Internet.
Aromas would not have to buy any cmoputers. Aromas would only have to allow
CafeNet computers to live in its space. CafeNet would use Aromas' electricity
if an agreement about reimbursement could be arranged. CafeNet will have to
connect more telephone lines to the shop, but this will be at CafeNet's
expense.
What CafeNet will do for you.
CafeNet will create its own culture of progressive, intelligent people, and
Aromas will be seen to be a part of this culture. This could be a disadvantage
if this culture is perceived to be undesirable. Another benefit is the
association with easy-to-use computer technology and the other businesses with
which CafeNet will be in contact. CafeNet will attract people to Aromas, and
they will drink coffee.
Another disadvantage could be in people coming in to Aromas and wearing out
their welcome. That is cmoing in, buying one cup of coffee and then sitting
there for hours playing on the computer. There are a number of ways around
this. One is to limit the amount of connect time for each day. Most people
will out of courtesy buy coffee because it is a coffee shop. Then there are
those people who like to socialise in Aromas whether there are cmoputers in
there or not.
Please think about this as being a way to expand the clientele of Armoas and
provide a useful service. Feel free to discuss this with myself and my
partner, or even to ask for a guided tour of the Internet. That is the least
that we can do.
PIPPIN'S FLOWCHART [transcribed by Qix from her notes]
2
1 write .......................................interviews...........
vision . . .
. 5 buy PC .
write . and modem . 4
3 initial . . software
business... 6 subscribe development
plan . . . 8
. . .
4 demo . 7 market research .
model...... . .
. 8 finalize business plan .
. . .
4 buy 386 . .
$ $ . .
. .
scrub up.................................apply for bank loan......
. 9
.
.
B E F O R E L O A N
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A F T E R L O A N
10 submit loan application........NO..........find a real job
. write scriptures and novels
.YES GRADUATE !!
.
receive loan
.
11 buy $$$ hardware..
. .................[sketch of a rocket launching]
12 ADVERTISE $ $ $...
/qix/taperave
/lizi/conspire
/qix/necro
/qix/taperave
Transcript of a tape recorded Tue night /Wed morn , around 9 Dec 1992,
transcribed that evening.
SIDE I
testing, testing...
Okay. For lack of anything better to do, and to fill in the next seven hours
or so, I'm going to sit here and record some tapes over the top of tapes that
I recorded at the ISEA afternoon.. at the Institute of Modern Art. The reason
I am sitting here frustrated for another seven hours or so is because I have
to wait until I can catch a bus out to Griffith to log on to the net again. I
had what I thought was a very good idea this evening, and that is.. an
electronic zine devoted solely to interviews conducted by email, or, in other
ways through the net. First person I want to interview is Jagwire X, who
interviewed Andy Hawks in one issue of Scream Baby. Hmm.
..and, just being frustrated at.. the stupidity of having something like the
net which permits instantaneous communication, instantaneous performance of
all sorts of things, and the reality of my situation here with no computer and
no phone link, having to wait hours and then having to commute for about an
hour in order to get to a terminal where I can start to do things. That
frustration has made me ask myself, what do I actually want to do, what sort
of things do I want. One of the first things I was thinking about is this idea
of moving overseas.. I've toyed lately with the idea of moving to California,
simply because it's a place where so many of.. the people whose ideas I find
interesting live - like, um, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, Avital Ronell,
FM-2030, the Extropian people - and also it's a place where a lot of social
processes are happening which I find interesting, such as American rave
culture and the whole "New Edge" business.. and that's made me ask myself:
Where *specifically*, in the world, would you consider moving, if you were
going out of Australia.. and the two places I've thought of are Berkeley and
Oxford. Berkeley for all the reasons I just mentioned - and also because if
you're in the United States - if *I* was in the United States I could travel
overland to future events like Phenomicon.
And the other place - Oxford - the only reason at all I would consider
moving to Oxford is basically because that's the home of the Institute for
Psychophysical Research - in other words, it's where Celia Green's group is.
There's no other particular attraction at all, for me, to being in England.
The fact that I would still consider Oxford against everything else in the
United States is a sign of how unique I think the IPR is, I've simply never
heard of a research institute anywhere else which has its apparent qualities.
So.. so that - yeah well, I don't think there's a good chance I'll be moving
to either of those places any time soon, at the very best what I might be able
to do is duplicate my achievement of '91, perhaps get a return trip to London,
in which I can visit both places again, perhaps for a bit longer this time..
But this leads me to write down on my list, "MONEY", and have a little pointer
to "Drug Trials", so when I start making phone calls, like phoning Kevin
Solway and phoning various other people, I should make sure to phone Clinical
Sciences at the hospital.
Okay. Now. As far as net access goes.. at the end of the year there's
probably going to be about a one-week period where labs at all of the
universities will be shut. So, during that period of time, my only form of
access.. my only means of getting messages *out*, in any case.. will be
through people like Jack and perhaps Kevin, perhaps Lara, who have modems. One
sort of thing I could do I guess would be to set up a forward from lambada to
Jack's account, the only problem is I wouldn't be able to get on to reset that
and since his account disappears on December 31st.. hmm.
And also in the longer term, I do think I need something better than I have
now. I was thinking before, I *do* want a Unix account so I can do things like
telnet and ftp and decompress and so on.. Now at Nyx, if I get shell access,
as I understand it I would be able to do all those things except telnet, and
if I can reach Nyx then I can telnet anyway. And my other options are, in
trying to get a local Unix account, are.. buy one for $500 at Griffith, or,
um, enrol at UQ again next year, part-time, in a subject which allows me to..
in a computing subject which would give me net access. A third possibility I
guess would be to enrol part-time and then try and get an account at the
Prentice Centre again, but this time as a student and not just as a member of
the general public. I don't know whether they'd look favorably on me having
grepped the password file once, though. Hmm.. and of course there's BrisNet to
consider as well, but BrisNet isn't very attractive for me so long as I don't
actually have my own modem and computer. I can try and save in order to get
Blinky back from Lara.. If I was to buy a phone and a computer and an account
at Griffith that would be almost $2000. Hmm.
Okay, the question of moving overseas really is relevant even in the short
term, even if only in the long-term is when I would actually be able to move,
because it raises the question of how.. deeply would I want to set down roots
here in Brisbane. For example I could try to aim for a situation analogous to
Dayalan's in '91, that is having apartment somewhere and my own little
computer terminal in it, and so on, and that could be a sort of a safe base,
which I could make my.. material centre of operations. That would require a
certain amount of energy invested in constructing a sort of a stable, "safe
haven" here in Brisbane, whereas if my long-term future really does lie in
Oxford or Berkeley, then I should perhaps consider only temporary arrangements
here, with a view to only settling down once I get over there.
And for what reasons does anyone ever want to settle down anywhere anyway.
It's only to get what security there is, in a very simple survival sense,
having a place where you can store your material possessions, and.. yeah,
generally not being susceptible to things like landlords raising rent or
deciding to kick you out, although as far as governments are concerned you're
alwys vulnerable to that..
Now, my drive to get the texts of my favorite books online, at least.. and
also, my hope of getting things like my diaries available at ftp sites or some
sort of archive like that.. is part of an attempt on my part to make it
possible for me to move around, and still be able to access all the things
that I want to be able to access. This is where I think FM2030 would be
useful. I still haven't seen "Telespheres" I don't think, the only book I saw
when I was in Indiana was "Upwingers". But the idea of.. not being fixed in
space, means that wherever you may happen to move you still need to be able to
reach everything that you want.
And as far as the serious aspect of GAIA 2000 goes, the Earth Summit in
cyberspace, I think FM really has the agenda for that [garbled], because he is
concerned with things like the megapolitical situation, if you want to call it
that, and the sort of things which the UN would already consider to be on its
agenda, but he's striving to interface those with topics which are still only
being considered in futurist circles, such as the concept of a telespheral
world, and a "smile-squared" agenda.
So the focus there, would be on people like FM2030 and Barbara Marx
Hubbard.. I think Earth Summit number one is already doing whatever anyone
might be doing as far as "saving the Earth" goes, in the conventional sense..
um, that plus Greenpeace - It'd be interesting to know more about what sort
of net access Greenpeace has, because they have their internal communications
network which I saw a bit of, but I haven't seen evidence of a direct
Greenpeace presence on the Internet. So, um, hmm.. A source of information for
NGOs and the nature of their connection to the net, might be, um, various
documents on the political ftp site, like the list of political addresses
around the world, that might have some email addresses in it as well. And then
there are also some documents that I've got on disk, under the names ECONET,
PEACENET, and GLASNET. I'm not sure where I got those from, I downloaded them
from somewhere when ftp from QUT was still working, and they listed
organizations which were on various alternative electronic nets, around the
world.. so that would be something else to add - and I still need to find out
about the damn model UN, what the hell is it.. and what's its relationship
toi the *real* UN? ..and for that matter, what does the real UN do with *its*
net access, because it has its own domain, un.org, so perhaps - perhaps I
could consider interviewing the UN rep who has been mentioned a few times when
I do a "whois un.org" - I'll just write that down, "whois un.org interview".
Now, well it's still only 11:30 so I'm not doing much for passing time.
I hope Kelly gets back within a few days because I want to discuss with her
either me moving out or us getting a phone here right now, because I'm getting
tired of not having a phone, basically.
In particular I wouldn't mind the opportunity to phone occasionally to, some
of the people in America, perhaps like Scotto or Max More or whoever..
because, although that is very expensive, at least that way I don't have to
commute. So it's expensive as far as money goes but it saves time.. I could
save money as well if I did Gordon's scheme of going to Redcliffe Airport or
wherever it is, and doing a sort of a phone-tapping thing, but that again
requires travel to get out there.
I should ask myself, can I *briefly*, or concisely, or clearly state, what
"Alpha and Omega", as a project overall, is about? I remember when John
Esposito was talking to me and Nathan, or before that, I was thinking that I
might explain my goals with this - my ultimate goals - as being to
"immanentize the Eschaton, or a reasonable facsimile thereof". So, the idea as
I have explained it at various times in the past, is to have "Alpha and Omega"
as a novel which exists in draft form on the Internet, which is anticopyright
so anyone anywhere can print it, and the novel will describe the event at the
end of the century, and it will also try to bring about the event. So the
whole idea is to try to achieve the superior coordination which might make
possible important things on a large scale.. but I do have to ask myself -
what can.. what really significant can a mass of people achieve except in
opposition to some sort of dictatorship. In terms of, an extropian sort of
agenda, or even a.. something like.. I have imagined that you could try to do
a paranormal-type.. or.. a paranormal experiment or an occult operation on a
planetary scale, through the means of the sort of global multimedia
intercontinental event that I have vaguely envisioned. Now with something like
that you might want masses of people for some reason or other, but to make
progress towards the singularity in a technical sense, requires discoveries,
which don't come from masses of people, they come from individuals. So in that
sense what is needed is a way for individuals to communicate with each other,
which I guess is what CafeNet-like projects are about.. A lot of the
individuals who might make technical contributions would already be in
universities - but, on the other hand, the existence of things like, people
making a living as programmers at home shows that there is a place for the -
the what? The technical hobbyist, who is somewhat removed from the centres of
their profession.. so I'm thinking here of the relationship of, say, someone
who might be writing shareware in Brisbane, like Kevin - although without the
philosophical aspirations as well - compared to programmers who work for large
corporations or who are on university faculties, and who have access to
something like the Internet in its full range. The first programmer can
nevertheless come up with something which is significant and, even if it's
only a small part, can still be crucial in the development of some larger
system. So a similar thing will probably apply with something like
nanotechnological design, so there's every reason to push for something like
CafeNet, for *that* reason as well, so those people can also contribute to the
collaborations which will bring into being new generations of software and of
hardware. Hmm.
But to return to "Alpha and Omega" - so, the idea is.. Well, I could compare
it to something like "The Book of the SubGenius", which has this fictional
aspect, but certainly you can lead a SubGenius lifestyle, even if "Bob" isn't
a real person, simply by making yourself a "Bobby" for one thing, or more
creatively by creating your own SubGenius spinoff. But either way, Ivan Stang
clearly has dreams or schemes of.. a TV revolution - he says somewhere in
"High Weirdness by Mail", that "Not only will the Revolution be televised, but
it will *be* the television show!" So I think he's.. he's plotting something
like, what if Bob Black were head of network programming on CNN - something
like that - inundating the world with artistically contrived messages in order
to, break the hold of the Conspiracy on our minds, so to speak. So he's
conspiring or plotting, or he's trying to bring about the means for him to get
in that sort of position; I don't know whether he'll get there or not, or how
high a profile "Bob" will have in 1998... But "Alpha and Omega" is similar to
that in that it is trying to set a very specific time - the 24-hour period at
the end of 2000 - in which something significant could happen, if people
managed to coordinate their efforts beforehand. Now, the actual event that
might happen could be any number of things. I listed these in part 6 of the
Scriptures, as I will be putting them out shortly, but.. but the
possibilities, even the mundane possibilities, are very very broad - and so
that's why the input of others is so crucial at this point.. because what I've
managed to dream up, is a framework, which I think is more detailed than any
previous.. attempt of this nature, in terms of setting a Date with Destiny.
But at the same time the specifics of what is to take place have been left
entirely up in the air, simply because I can't quite decide myself what I
would want. So, it's like I'm creating a framework which other people will be
able to come along and inhabit. And my specific ideas for what I would like to
happen on that date, have generally revolved around something to do with GAIA
2000, that's the sort of thing towards which I might actually work, in an
organizational sense. My other projects - the ones which have to do with,
conceptual progress I guess, research - I don't believe can be assigned a date
in that fashion, that simply has to be an ongoing thing. So in a sense, this
is - I'm partly anxious to try and get at least a first stage of "Alpha and
Omega" out of the way, so that I can concentrate on research again. But, the
fact that I thought of the ideas and that noone else is going to bring them to
at least that first stage of fruition means that I have a responsibility to
try and, crystallize "Alpha and Omega" enough for other people to understand
what it is that I'm on about, there.
Okay, so thinking it through a bit, my current agenda maybe could be divided
into the Research part and the Organizational part. The Research part
encompasses philosophy, science, and perhaps at some future date something
like magick. Um, that's the part where I'm trying to find, what is real, why
is it here, what are the limits of possibility. The other part, the
Organizational part.. is currently all within "Alpha and Omega", in a sense.
That's the part.. that's the future role which I can imagine myself playing,
in a sort of a futurist-activist sense.. trying - agitating for things like
life extension research and the construction of telespheral infrastructures.
Something like Li Po, in the draft of a draft of "Alpha and Omega" I guess.
So, what should I be doing now. I have a list of dozens of things to do on the
net, little things like trying to get talk.psychedelic going, interviews with
various people and so on..
Actually this seems a germane moment to go off on a little digression about
the problem of this perspective of urgency. I've acquired from Celia Green,
and the same idea is in Kevin Solway and I guess in a few other places as
well, that given the brief amount of time that I may have, and the possible
positive returns that may exist given sufficient effort, then I ought always
to be thinking of stripping unnecessary activity from my life. So, to a
certain extent this happens all the time simply as you get bored with things,
but this means actually making sacrifices, making decisions, prioritizing as
Rez would say.. deciding to forego certain things which might otherwise be
pleasurable in the interests of pursuing some more important goal.
So for example, something I used to think about when I was 16 or 17 and I
was thinking about trying to end death, and the idea of some sort of global
campaign to do that. And I was thinking, here I am, 16 or 17, or 18 or 19
later on, and millions of people around the world are still dying every day,
and I'm not directly doing this thing, of being an anti-death activist. Should
I be, somehow, doing something more, trying to think of a way to do something
more than simply talking about the idea with the occasional person? And, hmm..
I just had a thought a while ago, that if the world requires such urgency
then, somehow that says that it isn't perfect, from my perspective anyway, or
some - what's the relevance of this point, there's this idea that there is no
hope for anything, which I mentioned briefly on leri-list recently, and which
I see in Kevin Solway as well, and which is also in "Schismatrix" for that
matter, although it is not the ultimate philosophy [there] and that's one of
the things I want to ask Bruce Sterling about.. The proposition that the Regal
puts forward in one of his short stories, that "the emptiness of the Kosmos is
absolute and in time it kills us all. That's pure terror but it's also pure
freedom." And the other idea that "Futility is freedom". So the idea is that
no enterprise succeeds from the perspective of eternity. Or, to put it in
Celia-Green language perhaps, that we are doomed to finitude in all of our
enterprises, which I think is what that would amount to. So, for example,
Terence McKenna I think is, or in his wilder moments anyway, envisions 2012 as
being an entry into an eternal state of being - roaming in the fields of the
imagination, however you want to put it. The point is that he.. yeah, McKenna
is another person with this same idea, on a cosmic scale, he's saying that
there is an opportunity for us, as a planet or as a species, to enter into an
eternal condition, but that it is not a foregone conclusion. That it will
require "cognitive activity", he says somewhere is the essence of what is
required - we have to understand our situation, or else we cannot pass the
death of the species in the way that an individual who doesn't understand the
nature of consciousness presumably has trouble at the moment of death,
assuming that there is some sort of passage to another state of being which
opens, which again is one of McKenna's propositions in the essay I
transcribed. Whereas, the posthuman philosophy which the Regal puts forward in
Bruce Sterling's story, is one of ultimate despair and freedom arising from
that despair - you can do anything you want, because it's all hopeless anyway
in an ultimate sense.
So, to my mind the attraction of the second philosophy - the only attraction
that I can see - is the freedom of action that it implies, because if nothing
matters in an ultimate sense - so in other words there is no ultimate payoff
possible for any [course of] action - then you really are free to do whatever
you want. On the other hand, the attraction of the point of view which says
that there *is* something to strive for with an infinite payoff, is that it
opens the possibility of an infinite payoff. Of course there are philosophies
as well which would say that there's an infinite payoff for everyone, I guess,
and that's not just philosophies in the sense of possible philosophies, but I
think that some brands of Buddhism.. or at least - probably Buddhism, at
least, say that everyone achieves Enlightenment ultimately. Exactly what
Enlightenment is and whether it's desirable and whether it's an infinite
payoff of sorts is a valid question, but, placing it in that category for the
moment, that is an example of a world-view in which it doesn't matter what you
do and you still get everything in the end, or everything worth wanting in any
case. If the world is like that, then it really doens't matter what I do and
there's a happy ending to it all.. The cases that I'm considering, or.. that I
want to think about more, are the ones where there is an infinite payoff for
the right path being taken, but it's not a certain outcome, and the one where
there is no infinite payoff at all.
Now to actually decide whether the world falls into either of those
categories falls into my Research agenda - the limits of possibility in
particular. I would like to be able to get some idea of possible
epistemologies - what are the ways which the world might be? because at
present I feel as if I don't even have a single adequate ontology or candidate
metaphysics which does justice to everything, and that the main sticking point
in that as always is the mind. Because material things existing in space can
be conceived of in geometric or other mathematical ways whereas the content of
thought is..ore puzzling. That is not to say that it is ncecessarily beyond
mathematical modelling, but simply that I don't feel the same clarity of
perception when I contemplate thought or my own thought, or models for that
thought, as I do when contemplating potential models for material reality, or
matter, or physics. So, the relevant fields might be phenomenology, or
semantics, or some things arising out of cognitive science, but I definitely
want to see something which either accounts for the mind and relates it to
the physical paradigms, or subsumes the physical paradigms - because that's
always a possibility, that someone could advance a philosophy or a metaphysics
in which the concepts of physics as we know it are somehow secondary to the
account of mind given. That could be perhaps a pantheistic sort of philosophy
in which mind is omnipresent, the sort of thing which is described in "The
Great and Secret Show" by Clive Barker, or it could come out of a philosophy
arising out of esotericism, if I understood them better I might be able to
judge that question better, in which the world as we see it is held to be
entirely the product of magickal operations, most of them performed.. not
consciously, or not.. with.. the thought that they are magickal operations. A
similar outlook would be the one mentioned by Charles McCreery in one of his
books, where he says that it seems perfectly possible that you could have a
world in which you have discarnate entities, or at least not incarnate in the
sense that we are, having minds and then bodies, which possess the
capabilities of psychokinesis or materialization or similar things, that they
collectively create a world, and then for some reason repress the knowledge of
these abilities in themselves, or perhaps use the abilities without being
conscious of those abilities as.. or in the fashion that I just described
them, so it was just something that we did - we brought the world into being
or the mind brought the world and us into being, and only now through us is it
looking around and saying, What is this? How did it come to be here? This is a
bit like the idea I outlined in trying to understand one of Rez's posts on
leri..
Okay, a note for the future: whatever form my living arrangements take place
in the further future - whether I'm mostly here in Brisbane or mostly in
oxford or Berkeley or whether I'm some sort of global nomad - I know that I
can do my best work on the net, in the sense that whatever it is that my
talents are I've been able to exercise them more fully in the past two months
of net activity, than I ever have in any other medium I've ever had access to.
So this means that it's important for me to have a proper Unix account
somewhere which I can have access to, so that i can do things beyond sending
mail and reading and posting news, which makes validation of the Nyx account
important, because that is a free Unix account, I presume once you have shell
access, which you don't have to pay for and which I should be able to reach
from anywhere in the world. It's all very well to actually buy an account at
Griffith or to get one as a result of being enrolled in a subject but that's
not a long-term arrangement. The Griffith account only lasts a year, and the
UQ account only lasts a semester. So - *get the Nyx account validated*.
Another future note: one of my goals definitely is mass Internet access or
mass access to whatever the world net becomes, even for people who don't buy
their own hardware.. in fact that is especially an important option to take
into account.. anyhow, the point is that CafeNet-style projects and
communications centres projects as I originally conceived them, in the form of
public communications centres, video arcades, or like computer labs
transplanted to downtown urban area, would appear to be the only way, given
existing accessible technologies, to achieve that. At some future point it
might be possible to have a wireless mobile-phone-like connection to a portable
laptop etcetera and so you might not need a walk-in place like that, but
certainly at present that would require a cheapness and sophistication of
technology which doesn't appear to exist, and so - not on a commercial scale
anyway - and so this is the importance of emphasizing any
communications-centre style project. So one thing I should consider doing is
repeating my post of the first week of '92, which was the initial sort of
nucleus of CafeNet, and asking again for contacts. There was the guy in
Holland in particular who sent me a long list of details about a cafe he
wanted to set up, but the cafes don't interest me so much, because even then
it's still too much of a bother. You need somewhere like a lab where a lot of
people can go.
Okay.. just finishing drawing up, in nice big letters on a large piece of
paper a sort of agenda for myself. In the middle I've got "A.O as project -
Formal structure: 24 hours - McKenna - Leary", so that's what I was talking
about before. The formal structure of "Alpha and Omega" is the specific date
and structure that it provides for this attempt to.. do something. End the
world. happily. And then the specifics of what I'm trying to do, partly
through "Alpha and Omega", so in other words the content to put into that
structure, on the Organization side I've got two sections, "GAIA 2000" and
"The Posthuman Condition", which are the classic two sections of AO. And
they're also two different but potentially complementary political agendas.
GAIA 2000 is the Earth Summit in cyberspace, and so that's referring to
ordinary New-Age aspirations, you might say.. you know, uh, no more sickness,
war poverty or hunger, peace on earth, save the environment, and so on. And
then the "Posthuman Condition" section is about things like Space Migration -
Intelligence Increase - Life Extension, in other words trying to go beyond the
human condition and the classic limitations which still exist no matter how
much economic and social progress is made. So in the first section I've got
"?" and "politics" and "the Last International", and, the reason I've got that
there is that that sort of Discordian politics, is the most neglected
political stream in a sense - probably because it's the most extreme, calling
for things like the abolition of work, and so I would want somehow to
highlight that possibility even if wasn't the sort of thing that I ultimately
agreed with, simply to give it a better hearing. Because all the classical
political strategies, whether it's violent revolution led by a vanguard, or
democratization and the election of people to do stuff for you, or what have
you - workers' councils', the net analogues of that are pretty easy to imagine
- but they're all there - they are strategies or ideas which can be called
upon, which I may actually choose to dramatize in writing "Alpha and Omega"
and which may ultimately be appropriate if the whole thing goes ahead.
But. Anyhow, I have down the bottom in the list of organizations, "SubGenius
Foundation", "Otisian Congress". This has to do with actual organizations or
associations in real life which I would consider relevant to what I'm trying
to do. I mean, other people are going to work through different means -
[SIDE 1 ENDS, THANK "BOB"]
SIDE II
- but I'm talking about looking for an organization, or an association, which
might be compatible with the way I'm considering operation. And the two things
which come to my mind are the SubGenius Foundation, because it has the
potential to evolve into a really global grouping which still preserves as
much of the Discordian spirit as is possible on such a scale; and the idea of
the Congress of Weird Religions, which Mal was discussing with me today. It
may fall to the Otisians to actually organize the real thing. My particular
creation <garbled> is the Committee of 333.. these are all just ideas I'm
throwing around a bit at the moment, but, um, I think so many of the other
things here, like GAIA 2000 and so on, it's just too good a joke to waste,
it's just a joke, particularly the way it interfaces with Campus Crusade for
Cthulhu and maybe this can link up with Scott's plans, somehow. Hmm. Anyhow,
so, so.. so.. notes for the future.
Other things in GAIA 2000 section: alt.save.the.earth plan. Since - oh,
and I've also written "emphasis on net aspect as Real Life already exists". So
the point here is that if I'm going to be working through the net - this is
actually what I wrote in t15.txt in the Scriptures, that the point is to bring
about a historical event in which the Internet enters real-life history, so if
the point is to do something using the resources of the net, something which
has been potential but which resoucres haven't been used to actually do it
before, I don't want to simply try and create, say, an "online World Future
Society" because a World Futurist Society already exists. What I should
instead be doing is concentrating on creating online interfaces *between* say,
the World Future Society and the Lindisfarne Association, things of that
nature.. associations which can only link up through the means of the net.
Okay, so moving on to "Posthuman Condition", I've written "5th Plateau",
"Extropian Institute", "Upwingers", "SMIILE". The last three are sort of
self-explanatory but the Extropian Institute I'm particularly interested in
because it's the first organization which seems to have Up-Wing or posthuman
aims. At present as far as I know it is mostly a mailing list and the
*Extropy* magazine, so the extropian corporations or TAZs or nation-states,
whatever they turn out to be, still haven't come into being, but this will
certainly be a nucleus of them, in some respect. I don't know how
organizationally evolved UpWingers is, I suspect that extropians may already
have outpaced it actually, but that's just a supposition.. The 5th Plateau,
hmm.. that might serrve to bridge the GAIA 2000 - Posthuman Condition gap, by
taking Maslow's hierarchy of needs and then adding the need which I think
Barbara Marx Hubbard identified and which is also identified in "The Human
Evasion", the need to transcend the human condition as it is, the point once
again being that politics can rearrange existing resources, it can change who
orders what or even *whether* anyone orders anyone to do anything, but
politics alone does not lengthen the human lifespan, or dispel ignorance about
our position in the universe, or even invent a new means of production.
I've also got in the Organization section "Truths during the event". Now
that's referring to the possibility that - to use a specific example - suppose
I became convinced that an important thing, or *the* important thing to do,
was to try to communicate certain ideas, certain key memes, in the course of
that event. This would mean trying to influence the entertainment or the
multimedia aspect of it so that at certain critical moments, certain thoughts
were communicated - so for example, I could run through "Poison for the Heart"
and pick out certain aphorisms, and have them flashed up on screens at raves
happening around the world, things like that. So that's another thing which
could fall into the scope of Organization.
It seems to me that the thing which characterizes the Organization half is
that in some sense you suppose that you already know what you're doing or
what you're trying to achieve, and it's a matter now of working out how to do
it. So for example in GAIA 2000 you're working out how to save the world -
how to keep things sustainable, and so on. The question is one of logistics in
all of these - even the logstics of transcending the human condition or
developing nanotechnology, the goal - of thorough control of the structure of
matter at the molecular scale - is *there*, and what is needed to be developed
is the logistics of how to get from here to there. Whereas if you look at the
other half, the Research half, this is where the unanswered questions are, and
the point of these investigations is to get a clearer picture of things, um,
in case there's some new factor which invalidates, or otherwise supersedes or
should be added to the ones which are already present within the organization
half. So up the top I've got Philosophy first of all, and then I've written
"Objectivism" and then "Nietzsche" and "Stirner", and then "foundations of
Mathematics". Now Objectivism - just out of all the philosophical *systems*
that I've ever heard of, is the one which makes the most sense to me. I think
radical skepticism is in a sense superior to Objectivism, intellectually, in
that total uncertainty seems to be the chief proposition that I can be certain
about in my current state of being or state of knowledge - but that's not a
system. Objectivism is a system, and as systems go, as I said it's the best
I've ever heard of. I added Nietzsche and Stirner as a sort of a tribute to
Solan I guess. When someone on talk.philosophy.misc asked, "Who do you think
is the best philosopher?", Solan wrote Nietzsche, largely for his critical
insights, he mentioned Stirner for some reason, I think from the perspective
of morality, and mentioned Ayn Rand I think in terms of systematic
consequences of the philosophy. Something like that. So - I should add
"skepticism", there. Skepticism and Objectivism, and a note to look at
Nietzsche and Stirner again.
Fopundations of Mathematics, is the form of applied philosophy which
interests me most, because I'm very interested in the ontological status of
mathematical entities... Um, yeah, I don't even feel as if I can say very
clearly what the state of affairs is there since I lack the technical
knowledge of mathematics and also the.. a settled enough line of thought, or a
definite angle from which to address this, since there seem to be so many
approaches to that question: intuitionism, constructionism I think is another
one, or, let alone more radical ideas like something analogous to, Penrose
crossed with Philip K Dick, in which you might have the Platonic forms being
real but emerging from the specific somehow, so that the specific exists
first, and then the activities of the mind, in generalizing and perceiving
mathematical forms actually brings them into being, so that the act of
percxeption is actually the act of creation. This is the problem of
perception, it's the general problem of reality as well.. do the things.. what
things exist before we think they exist? do we bring them into being as we
think about them - and that's related to the, the sort of generalized magickal
possibility that I was talking about on the other side, the idea that the
world is in fact totally the creation of mind and that the worldviews of the
present century in which mind is an epiphenomenon of matter are in fact
intellectual errors arising from the extreme, or.. the particular form that
the magick has created here, the particular world that has been created here
is one in which a heavy reliance upon things that are already there, so that
the application of the creative faculty (assuming that such a thing is
fundamental, for the purposes of this) - so that the applications of this
hypothetical magickal creative faculty become rarer and rarer, and so it
starts to seem as if the structure which has been created, preceded the
creative faculty - but of course it really could be that way, and it really
could be that there is a natural order to things which determines all
thoughts, actions and perceptions, in which case there really is no such
thing as creation, or, let alone magick in the Crowleyan sense.
Anyhow, next category after philosophy is Research, and I've got categories
here for Matter and Mind under that, which is a bit redundant there.. okay, so
matter is basically Physics, and what's there is "Quantum Mechanical
metaphysics", "Fundamental Theory' - so in other words actually having a
Theory of Everything, just in physical terms, and then - I've written
"Prigoginic levels" as well, which is just a sort of vague reference to
projects like the Principia Cybernetica - I should - I'll make a note of
*that*, "Principia Cybernetica", "cybsys-LIST" - um, and the general attempt
to work out a formal theory of emergent properties, spontaneous orders and so
on. Since that could address every level of the hierarchy that seems to exist
in nature at once. Then there's mind: "cognitive science, neural nets,
phenomenology, semantics, methodological solipsism (knot theory)" - that's my
personal.. favorite, um.. yeah, the mind is the more complex of the two in
terms of planning how to address it because there seems to be much less
agreement about the mode of investigation. Hmm..
Okay, continuing with research: "IPR", in a little square box. Above
"Anomalous phenomena: database, typology".. I still don't know in detail the
IPR's research plan, program, but I would think that it would possibly be the
best in the world as far as the category of paranormal phenomena goes, given
the intellectual quality of the people there and the number of years which
it's been going. So I'd sort of rely on them to provide some good ideas at
this point. "Magick - question mark", "Occult - question mark": sooner or
ter I'm going to have a go at something here, like either, I don't know, go to
some wiccan circle and see if anything happens or perform the Mass of the
Phoenix on 200 grams of LSD the way that Robert Anton Wilson did -
*micrograms*, that is - um.. but um, because those are the sort of things
which, accoding to the philosophy of them, you cannot just approach them
intellectually, you actually have to do things if you want to be a magician.
"COMPLEX: Maps of everything, maps of the maps". This is saort of a general
reference entry calling for the synthesis of all existing information in forms
that are accessible, so this is like World Wide Web in particular.
And then at the very bottom of the sheet I've got "Historical trajectory -
possibilities - panspace". So, part of the reason for the philosophical
investigation - metaphysics, and mathematics - is to form a clearer picture of
possible wo
rlds - that's probably related more to logic than to mathematics
actually, "Logic and Kripke". <writing> But.. the idea of seeing the possible
forms that the world might take is the preparatory step before deciding
between them. So I want to say, okay, the world may be .. may possess an
idealist metaphysics or a realist metaphysics or something else.. so then,
okay, now I have range of possibilities. Now the world presents this aspect to
me, is it compatible with one of these or all of these, some of them, none of
them? So that's astep towards actually trying to find out the truth. Then the
"historical trajectory".. this relates to the question of infinite payoff - I
might actually write that in alongside this: "Infinite.. payoff". So the
question there is.. multifold. The first one is: Is there an infinite payoff?
of some sort. If yes, then the next question is, what do we have to do to get
it? And if no, then the question is, what now; if we're necessarily finite in
some respect; and - and I wonder, if we were necessarily finite, could we even
know it? I wonder of knowledge of[one's] finitude, absolute knowledge of
finitude - absolute knowldeg seems to imply a sort of limitlessness, because
absolute knowledge would not be able to be doubted, there could be no
criticism of it which could cast any doubt. So therefore if a person was
capable of absolute knowledge then in that respect at least they would not be
finite. Yeah. It would be somewhat ironic if that was the only respect we were
not necessarily finite, and we could know it! Knowing it would be something at
least. But it's also possible that we can never know any of these things.. but
anyhow, so there is this question: if there is no path out of finitude, what
do we do? That i think, would become more of an individual question, for me
anyway.. maybe if I spent years of my life convinced that the human condition
was necessarily limited in a certain way, then maybe I would start to think in
social terms anyway.. because I would know that the horizons *were* limited in
a certain respect. But at this stage I'm not even - I mean, even given the
vagueness of the term, infinite payoff, it nonetheless suggests the idea that
there is a possible trajectory to human existence which would carry it beyond
the human condition as we believe it to be into some transcendent state; for
example, Leary's scenario, McKenna's scenario, FM2030's scenario. And.. the
meaning of "Panspace", that last entry after "Possibilities" and "Historical
trajectory".. that was my term made up for something even bigger than
superspace.. since superspace after all is sort of a phase space of possible
geometries with a particular topology, that of.. um, or not topology, but
possible 4-spaces out of general relativity whereas panspace was to be a much
bigger domain, more like the class of all sets or the class of ordinals, and
so the idea of translating panspace to physics or to reality, is to say that
this is the range of possibilities within which we dwell, and one way of
conceiving the infinite payoff is to say that it would constitute an entry
into panspace. I guess I might as well jst put it as "becoming God", in that
sense, but.. that would imply achieving unlimitedness in every way that you
can be unlimited, whereas perhaps we can be unlimited in time but not in some
other respect. So, panspace is my designation for the potentially achievable
ultimate, the payoff itself, the payoff, the ultimate degree of freedom
attainable would be freedom in panspace. Hmm..
Another observation which just occurred to me. This is the way .. that I
always used to think and plan.. in my first year at college people would come
into my room and they would be freaked out by all these flowcharts on the
walls, which were talking about things of a similar magnitude, ah, you know,
that in the next twenty years there would be things like artificial
intelligence and space colonization and so on, and I was, and I was just
trying to put them all up there next to each other so I could get an idea of
the totality. And part of my depression in this year, I think is related to..
becoming preoccupied with distractions. I think the net for one is a great
provider of distractions.. there's just so many things you can get lost in,
like exercising your wit satirizing newbies, or inventing little in-jokes and
then stretching them out. The other factors in my depression, what were they:
"Bob".. Nathan.. and America.
Now.. let's see. "Bob". When I was reading "The Book of the SubGenius",
early on, with no one else around me - no.. contacts who knew about it - I
remember I was very resentful at different times, because.. I think just
because I didn't like what I was being told, or the message that I was picking
up, which seemed to be saying that utterly *everything* is fucked. Hmm. So
that was one.
I mentioned Nathan because he I think had a viewpoint like the one that I
characterized as the "Regal" one, the Posthumanist one out of "Schismatrix",
the Hassan i Sabbah one, the idea that futility is freedom, that the cosmos
kills us all in time, although he had a Lovecraftian sort of slant on this.
And it's interesting that he may in fact have changed his mind as his concepts
have evolved in recent months, he talks about "returning to the Light" and so
on now. But um.. in particular "seeing the Void", whatever it was that
happened the first time I took mushrooms, I was *very* depressed after that ,
and that was because I saw all of my integration of concepts and my experience
and so on which I was planning to communicate in "Alpha and Omega", leading
back to nothingness. That was what I thought I had seen, or that was the slant
I came to put on it the more I thought about it in the next few days. This
idea that, there is only one mind, and that the whole of the complexity of
existence is its evasion of the pointlessness of that existence. I'm not even
sure if that concept makes sense, that.. that a sort of an empty mind could be
repelled by its own nature. But certainly there was this elemental repulsion
from this state, which makes me think of Barbara Marx Hubbard talking about
how in becoming a mystic, and aligning yourself with the Creative Intelligence
at work in the universe, you come to introspectively identify with the
creative.. *motive* or desire or drive, and I wonder whether she means having
an experience like that, in which you yourself become, or face, this utterly
featureless void and, are driven away from it or are recreated from it.. hmm.
And then, the third thing was America. Um, or my travles in general, so I
should include London as well. Because I was very depressed for a great deal
of that, and that .. hmm. Possibly what I was seeing there was the reality of
large urban centres, or something like that; the nature of life.. I thought of
saying "animal nature", and perhaps it's true in a sense, like the guy in
London was saying, that all the people are after is money, sex and drugs,
that doesn't exactly facilitate the "life of the mind". So, um.. the lack of
opportunities for elevation, I think that above all depressed me - I certainly
wouldn't have expressed it that way to myself, but, just the circularity and
evident pointlessness of what people were doing.. just seemed to be leading
nowhere.
And then there's Kevin Solway, aswell, who's interesting, because on the one
hand he has himself a tremendous purpose, and a purpose to which he would like
to call other people, in what he expresses as "the survival of wisdom". But on
the other hand he does his best to destroy what he would see as false or
futile hopes, not through mockery as the SubGenii would do it, but through
explanation and devaluation. So the explanation comes from rendering
transparent - or simply comprehensible - processes which were controlling a
person, whether it's political, religious, or something to do with love. By
trying to expose the inner workings - true motivations, and so on - once
you've truly understood those concepts, presuming that they're accurate, they
are then a part of how you view those things, and if.. if for them to operate
in the way described you had to be unconscious of the mechanics of that
operation, they can no longer operate in that way, because you are now
conscious of it. So.. I think that some of his propositions are intended to
have that consequence.
So that was explanation. And the other part was devaluation, and that is the
method of trying to make you feel shame or disgust at something in which you
might previously have taken pleasure, I think again the foremost example is
love.. Not simply the *rhetoric* which he uses to address it, say in talking
about "the evil of love" or phrases like "despicable game", I don't know if he
uses that specific phrase - but also in his analysis of the motives of it -
and this links back to the first category of explanation, that, by say
explaining something which was taken to be elevated or spiritual or a higher
pursuit, and explaining it as being say just another means of achieving
happiness, it is thereby devalued somewhat, and in some cases he would attempt
to explain such things like religion, politics again, things into which people
may have pured a lot of passion as truly debased activities which have been
rationalized as exalted. Hmm.
So, to a certain extent his thoughts have been at work within my own psyche,
so.. So, yes, the contradiction here is this - or, I don't know if it's a
contradiction, but anyhow - what.. the principal object of his attack I think
is in fact the desire for happiness. That if you can kill that or extinguish
that, then you are free. And that is the condition which he is aiming at, I
think.. I think that would be a quality of being "fully human", in the fashion
he intends that term to be understood. But. Or not, but, but okay, How does
that relate to my own goals. I've taken to calling them extropian, the
particular category I'm thinking of.. whether I should call them UpWing or
perhaps simply posthuman, transhuman, I'm not sure, because extropian is a
specific cluster of concepts.. I'll call them posthuman. Okay, what am I to
make of my posthuman goals, the ones about transcending the human condition..
for example, physical immortality. Um.. now, one motivation of trying to
extend one's life, is to ensure one's own future happiness. If you could be
assured that you weren't going to die, that would be the anxiety of death
gone. There might be further anxieties about, say, whether you were going to
spend that eternity in a hell of sorts, but it is nonetheless another
expression of a desire for happiness, a desire to get things the way you want
them to be. So, an attack on happiness as being in general something not to
strive for.. because .. now, now, what is the because? The argument seems to
be that happiness, or, he says explicitly, "Happiness is the cause of
suffering, and suffering is the cause of happiness". ..so that happiness is
the cause of suffering, because when happiness goes away you suffer, and
suffering is the cause of happiness, because when the suffering goes away, you
become happy. Whereas the extropian sort of goals almost like trying to the
limits of .. possible happiness. For example, make it eternal, rather than
something that ends when you die. Hmm. So, if that were possible, would it
invalidate the argument against happiness in the first place or is there
another argument against happiness?
Because I think Kevin is saying that truth - Absolute Truth - and happiness
cannot coexist, because the absolute truth is that all things are transitory,
but happiness .. wishes for eternity. <moan of contempt at this phraseing> Oh,
no, that's, that's not a .. it's - so long, so long as there is still a desire
for infinity, perhaps, in some respect.. this I think is where I perceive a
difference between him, and Celia Green. Celia Green would appear to consider
the infinite payoff still possible in a sense which might be conventionally
considered positive. She does her own share of destruction of illusions, or
seeking to expose true motivations and so on, but nonetheless, she still
writes things like "The most exciting thing possible is actually true", which
is not an outlook of *cosmic* cynicism. Whereas Kevin writes things like,
"Life appears overfull of beautiful things, but is very poor underneath". So I
think he would hold to this - Buddhist? - view that happiness is necessarily
transitory and doomed to extinction, or even interestingness for that matter;
anything in which one might take pleasure or joy.. and that because he wishes
to value truth above all, and since truth and happiness cannot coexist, then
he will value truth to the exclusion of - happiness or personal satisfaction.
And for this reason he demands that the desire for happiness must die.
Whereas, because Celia Green would not say that the infinite payoff is
necessarily impossible, .. or even given her contempt for happiness as it is
conventionally conceived - for example saying "happiness never sounded
interesting" and so on - even seeking interestingness is a form of desire -
and perhaps I should be using the word desire more often than hapiness here..
To continue: so, she is saying that truth and the realization of an infinite
desire, or a core desire or any desire - the true realization, can conceivably
coexist... Well, she doesn't say it, but it seems to be an implication of her
open-ended approach. Kevin has an infinite aspiration of sorts, in the
survival of wisdom, because he is saying there in effect that he wants wisdom
to continue into eternity, so that is an infinite desire of sorts; but,
wisadom here seems to be, um, the knowledge that desire is pointless and ought
to be extinguished. So the desire is, to carry the knowledge that desire ought
to be extinguished, into eternity.. or, to.. for that to always be present in
consciousness.. that knowledge, or supposed knowledge. Now, Celia Green wants
people to cultivate centralised psychology and in particular the existential
perception.. which is just the awareness that existence is there, that things
are real and the concomitant percpetion of total uncertainty. Now, does that
amount to the same thing as, wisdom, as Kevin would conceive it? Is there a
difference here? Because as I have portrayed Kevin's wisdom it has concerned
mostly desire but I simply selected that aspect of it out, in particular. For
example, he himself writes somewhere, that "The wise man knows nothing and is
uncertain of everything, and yet ironically for this reason he knows
everything". Perhaps that should read "knows everything that can be known.. by
a finite being".
Now.. it seems to me that, Celia Green talks of the existential percpetion
as having certain consequences, and.. although she doesn't draw this
connection explicitly, among those are the various despairs that she lists.
..which were, what: "The despair of urgency, the despair of significance and
the despair of being itself". Now.. it took me a while to understand those.
The despair of urgency is the despair that arises upon perceiving one's own
apparently finite lifespan, or resources and in particular time, which causes
one to be urgent about whatever it is that you're trying to do. The despair of
significance is simply not knowing what's important. The despair of being
itself... N ow that might be.. a perception that existence is necessarily
flawed or frustrating, that in all possible worlds it must be inadeq -
[TAPE RUNS OUT]
necessary part of a happiness..
/lizi/condest
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Subject: Re: Conspiracy to Destroy the Earth?
Message-ID: <1992Nov9.033532.23410@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
From: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 03:35:32 GMT
Sender: usenet@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (netnews admin account)
References: <1992Nov6.003254.22217@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
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Xref: wattle alt.conspiracy:14534 alt.slack:2414
I am posting, with the author's permission, a detailed response to my
original "Conspiracy to Destroy the Earth?" posting which I received via
email; I am posting it on Usenet because I think it is a very good
exposition of all the reasons to be *extremely* skeptical about the
story I was told, and similar tall tales.
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 16:54:06 -0800
From: Cosma R. Shalizi <lizi@ocf.Berkeley.EDU>
To: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu
Article 1049 of alt.destroy.the.earth:
From: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
Subject: Conspiracy to Destroy the Earth?
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 00:32:54 GMT
I started writing this article about the events of last night intending to
send it off to a mailing list to which I subscribe, but I am posting it to
Usenet News instead because it's not really on-topic for the list, whereas
here I think it is. I am not a regular reader of alt.conspiracy or
alt.destroy.the.earth, so perhaps these topics have come up here before.
Anyhow, on with the story...
Before I read this morning's mail I want to have a go at describing some
strange things that happened last night. I was walking home from the train
station and overtook a guy who had been walking along slowly ahead of me
(it was about 12.30 am). He said a few things by way of talking a little,
but I was thinking about net-related matters and it was damn cold anyway,
so I said I wanted to keep going.. so then he pulled out a $10 note and
gave it to me. This slowed me down a bit. We did end up talking for a few
minutes, in the course of which he told me a bit about his life: briefly,
he was born in Algeria just before the Revolution, a "pied-noir", so
neither the French nor the revolutionary Algerians would accept his
generation; he went to Europe as a young man - said he knew London and
Paris like the back of his hand; now he was here in Australia, married
with five children, and his advice to me was 'to follow your mind, not the
money or the carrot'.
Anyhow, after we separated, a few minutes later I ran into *another*
guy, who was hurrying past until he saw me and stopped to say hello. I
recognized him after a few moments: we had spoken in a cafe a few times -
then he was telling me of the necessity of space colonization, so the
human species doesn't have all of its eggs in one basket. We talked a bit,
and then a bit longer (but it was mostly him talking and me listening),
and I will have a go at summarizing what he told me:
He is now homeless - but he has a list of dozens of addresses that he
tries to visit every day. Basically his aim is still to try to save some
fraction of the human race from extinction, but his preferred means have
changed and this time I got to hear more of his worldview. He began by
saying how we're all living in a sick society, citing as an example an
incident within the last few days where he had seen a street kid carrying
several ?ounces of pure speed, who was handing it out to anybody who
wanted it. "Now how do you think that sort of stuff gets on the streets?"
he asked.
1. Even if this happened, there is an exceedingly simple explanation.
Selling drugs makes lots of money. Giving away free samples, as
laundry-detergent makers know, can be quite effective - especially
when the product is addictive. In other words, the answer to his
question is, "Free enterprise at work."
After a few other examples, he went on to say that this overall
sickness was largely attributable to universal corruption - "the police,
the government minister, the US senate". "Kids don't believe the teacher,
they don't believe the minister, they don't believe their parents. If you
lie to a five or six-year-old, they may not really have an idea of what a
lie is just yet, but they know they're being deceived."
"Overall sickness ... attributable to universal corruption?" Hogwash.
I could just as plausibly say that universal corruption is
attributable to society's overall sickness, or attribute both to a
"degenerative virtue." ("Virtue" in the now archaic sense of "specific
property.") Most five or six year olds _very well indeed_ what a lie
is - certainly I and my friends did.
He went on to say that a state of massive denial is near-universal -
people don't want to see how bad things are, how bad they are getting, or
what is just around the corner - which, he said, is nuclear Armageddon. He
recounted a few stories about the way geopolitics supposedly really works;
eg the Russians saying to the US, "OK, we give in, we surrender, just so
we don't have to fight a war. But as the price you're going to have to
support all these people that *we've* been supporting" - (I think he was
talking about ex-Soviet Central Asia here) - "that's the price *you'll*
have to pay for getting us to drink Coca-Cola and accept the rest of your
shit."
This story in re the Russians is, to be blunt, bullshit. Certainly, for
a long time the US more or less implied that, if, by some miracle,
Communism "withered away" in a Soviet-bloc country, then the Marshall
plan would be repeated, but by the time the Cold War ended, the US was
too poor to follow up on this. We sure as Hell aren't supporting Soviet
Central Asia. Mind you, this was how the sharper people on the US side
predicted the Cold War would end from the beginning - that the US would
win because Russia would go broke first. They neglected to consider
that the US might also be broke. The Soviet government couldn't even
keep itself fed, much less make deals with the US.
For me the most interesting geopolitical story he told was his version
of China 1989. The US began by trying to entice China, with things like
aerospace technology transfer, and later exchange student programs, all
carefully calculated to try to spread the American system. "Several
thousand exchange students were sent to China, and there were no
restrictions on what they could take - sports cars, flashy clothes - and
of course your ordinary Chinese hasn't seen anything like this..." (This
is all meant to suggest what he said of course - it's not a word-for-word
quote, I didn't have a tape recorder running.) Essentially, their presence
was such a stimulus to the Chinese students, who in turn were a stimulus
to the urban workers, that the 1949 "democracy movement" turns out to have
been the result of American conspiracy. So *then*, the Chinese government
"made a really heavy decision: they sent in the tanks, and they shot their
own children, in order to send the message, that they were prepared to use
the bomb." (ie "if they were prepared to do that to their own children,
what would they do to America?") This action apparently reined in the
interference of the American government in China.
Urk. Taking "sports cars" from the US to _China_? _Exchange
students_? No. What happened was that, following the power struggles
after Mao's death, the Chinese leadership fell to people who recogn-
ized that capitalism is a very good way indeed of industrializing -
after all, it grew up with it. So they set up parts of the economy
as more or less capitalist, and it worked. People got richer.
Rich people - especially rich, young, highly educated people - tend
to demand a voice in the government. You may have noticed that many
of the Tiananmen protesters carried placards of Mao - lots of them
were people who believed the rhetoric about a _people's_ republic,
etc. The message the Chinese government sent was to its own people:
Dissent and be crushed. In re the exchange students: Many more Chinese
students went and studied in the West than Westerns went to China.
On their return, these may well have had some ideological influence -
but the 1989 movement was not brought on by Americans flashing
their Levis and trolling in their Pontiacs. (The idea that "the
average Chinese" has never seen anything like a motor car is so
incredibly wrong-headed and patronizing that I won't bother to
comment.)
Later on he briefly praised the virtues of Chinese civilization - "4000
years; America is just 200 years old, it's just a little brat", and
"they've never invaded or raped and plundered another people, they've been
nonaggressive for four thousand years"; he even advised me to go to the
library today and read some books on Chinese history. He then contrasted
East with West, saying "the fucking American government, it's out of
control..."
5. China has a fascinating civilization and history. He doesn't know
squat about it. 4,000 years is _barely_ defensible if you count
illiterate villagers with semi-interesting pots as civilized.
Try more like 3,500 - whereas Europe, dating from Crete, can claim
at least 4,500. But that, and the fact that "American civilization,"
as opposed to a subspecies of Europe, doesn't exist, is a tangent.
The main point is that Chinese culture originated in a region much
smaller than the present main-land China, and it spread by the
usual methods - invasion, rape and plunder. The classical age of
Chinese philosophy was the Warring States period (c. -700 (memory
fades) to -221). During this time China was, in fact, a bunch of
warring feudal states, the rulers of which filled their time much
as rulers always have - with depravity, taxation, war and general
cruelty to commoners. Chinese schools of philosophy - at least the
ones which prospered - all claimed to have ways out of the chaos.
The school whih got itself put into practice was the Legalists,
who were, after Plato, the second group of people to elaborate
a totalitarian ideology. It delivered what it promised, and unified
China as a vast prison-camp. There was a revolt, a brief relapse
into anarchy, and what emerged was the Han empire. This based it-
self on a mixture of Confucianism and as much Legalism as it
could get away with. Chinese history is a succession of dynasties,
between which it was divided into squabbling principalities that
set their people to killing each other with as much gusto as any
other section of the human race.
As to their not being imperialistic, it is worth noting that
(as always, through the usual methods) the Tang dynasty ruled, in
addition to modern China (not including Tibet) modern Indo-China,
Korea, and so much of Central Asia that Li Po, the second greatest
poet of the dynasty, was in all probability born in Afghanistan.
It took the trauma of the Mongols to turn the Chinese even temp-
orarily isolationist. No doubt they will recover from this fairly
soon.
As to the East vs. the West - modern Europe (including its colonies,
such as the Americas and Oz) is the spoiled grand-child of old Asia.
It owes a lot to China and India and Mesopotamia and Egypt and
Persia. But it has definitely made its own, unique contributions:
modern science and its application to technology; the ideals of
representative democracy, the secular state and toleration; the
creation of truly global civilization. Some other ideas, which I
consider truly and deeply bad, it must take the blame for: nation-
alism and Marxism, for instance. But the fact is that not one of
the older nations is as it was. The Islamic world today, for in-
stance, is not the unified empire from which the West learned
mathematics, science, philosophy and even theology, but a fragmented
bunch of dirt-poor countries wasting themselves in ridiculous and
bloody quarrels, and a handful of oil principalities maintained by
the West. China today, certainly, is _not_ the China that was.
I don't know how clear all this sounds, but anyhow, his essential
allegation is that there is an inner core of extremely powerful people in
America who are planning to launch the missiles soon (when he mentioned
this he would look at his watch, and say things like, "I hope we have at
least two years" - I don't know why he looked to the watch, perhaps for
dramatic emphasis).
For the love of Cthulhu, WHY??? If the US launches, everyone else with
nukes launches too - AT US!!! Power-hungry people are not usually
thrilled by the prospect of ruling of radioactive rubble while watching
their thyroids swell. And why not know, why wait two years? Why not
wait eight? Or have done it the moment Ronnie came into office?
(Of course, I can here the answer: "I don't know why they set their
time-table like they do...")
He told me that because of a 50-year secrecy act of
some sort, you can't find out, say, who the first 300 people in the CIA
were, since it is held to be a matter of national security.
Again, false. The political appointees - Director, Assistant
Directors, etc., are matters of public record - they are appointed
by the President and confirmed (or not confirmed) by the Senate.
Requests for the "first three hundred people in the CIA" under the
Freedom of Information Act _might_ be turned down on the grounds of
national security. For a wonder, he's right about the 50 year limit
on this - but as the CIA was founded in 1947, if he can hold out
five more years, he can know for certain. Since it _was_ so long ago,
they might give the names to him anyhow. Definitely they couldn't
hide behind the national security clauses for the first 300 in the
Office of Strategic Services, the precursor agency of the CIA, since
that _was_ founded more than fifty years ago.
(This is where
he gave me a recap of Oliver North's appearance before the US Senate -
saying how North had said he was ordered to do what he did, but he
couldn't say who gave him his orders, since he would then be executed for
treason, and so the Senate agreed because North was thus following the
letter of the law stating that you can't divulge these names.)
This is false - utterly, utterly false. North claimed that some of
his orders came from his immediate superior, Admiral Pointdexter;
others he refused to say. He didn't have to say he'd be shot for
treason if he revealed them, for two reasons: A. The fifth amendment
to the U.S. Constitution gives any person the right to refuse to
testify if testifying would incriminate him, and B. The Congress
(not just the Senate) granted North immunity to prosecution on
the basis of his testimony _before_ he began to testify. Certainly,
no Senator with half a brain _approved_ of North's actions, or his
hiding them. Sen. Inoyue (?sp?) compared him to the defendants at
Nuremberg. I can say all this with utter certainty, because, like
anyone else with half a brain in this country (not many, alas) I
watched the hearings as they were broadcast. Unless your friend
cares to claim those were all a show, the real hearings were quite
different, and he just _happened_ to find out about them...
And
presumably it is these people who are the only ones who have the capacity
to launch the missiles - and I think he assumes that they intend to do so
because he can't see any other reason for continuing to produce them. And
the fact that nobody even *knows* who the power-wielders are - he said -
was why he was looking for schemes to make a safe haven for part of
humanity to make it through a nuclear apocalypse, rather than trying to
avert the missile-firing altogether.
"Presumably," indeed. The only person with missile-launching
capability in the US is the President - though I've no doubt there
are some fall-back arrangements in case he's in Washington when it
gets vaporized. Of course, the elaborate apparatus of cyphered codes
and keys and all _could_ just be a ruse, but he hasn't given us any
reason to think so.
There are two reasons the bombs keep getting made. First, the military
budget in this country is a gigantic - if not terribly productive -
jobs program. There are communities, and definitely companies, whose
livelihoods depend on new bombs, new missiles, new bombers and new
submarines. Until someone finds a way to effectively convert them
to civilian production, any US government which makes serious cuts
in "defense" risks loosing the next election ignominously. Second,
bombs are made of radiocative materials. They decay. Fifty, even
twenty year old nukes aren't reliably usable, and must be replaced,
if arsenals are to be kept up to strength. (Personally, I see _no_
reason not to let them wither away, but...)
He used the phrase "the serpent's head" a few times, as in "You have to
find the serpent's head and chop it off,
At least he knows his Mao: "Though a serpent be a thousand (meters?)
long, to kill it one need only chop of the head." (Quoting from
memory, and no doubt distorting it.)
if you want to do it that way."
This is either ungrammatical or meaningless.
He said thousands of people around the world were trying to find out who
these top people were, but "they went underground 20 years ago... And
these are really ruthless people. They shot their own president on TV,
after all!"
"20 years ago" means 1972 or thereabout. Kennedy - he was bound to
show up here, wasn't he? - was shot in 1963, i.e., they were "above
ground" when they orchestrated the assassination of the President.
This seems improbable. So does their date of disappearence - a cabal
running the US could _never_ afford to be visible; certainly if they
could have managed this for the first 25 years (counting from the
start of the CIA), there was no reason for them to hide in the age
of Nixon.
I am pretty sure he said at one point that he knew seven
people who had been shot dead in the course of such investigations (as he
was talking, he was contantly looking around us to see if anyone was
approaching). Whether these seven were people he knew personally, I'm not
sure.
Indeed.
I briefly mentioned the Internet, saying "couldn't you reach all these
millions of people you say you can't work out how to reach, by putting
your information out there". In trying to explain the net, I said that it
was a computer network linking mostly universities all over the world. He
said, in effect, that it was still probably not enough - that you could
tell all the college students the truth, and people would just panic
Of course. I saw this coming, too. There's never anything sensible
and construcive you can do against Them, and people are such insecure
and feeble little sheep that a conspiracy theory (!!!) will send them
raving off into the night.
("You'll probably start to panic when you realize how bad thngs are", he
warned me at the beginning; and indeed I was shivering violently
throughout a lot of the conversation, but I think that was because I was
standing there in the cold in just shirt, shorts and thongs.)
Glad to see you, at least, had a firm grip on reality...
"The
students might try to start a revolution, but in that case the people who
run the show would just go ahead with their plans now, rather than later."
Indeed - why _not_ now, rather than later? Why wait? So there can be
a few million more people in the Third World to kill?
"On the bases where they have these weapons stationed, once they're
getting ready to launch, those places are completely sealed off - no
communications from the outside world. They wouldn't know what was going on."
No. They are in communication with the NATO command centers - places
like NORAD and SAC and so forth. This is essential - command _must_
be able to give orders and get feedback, and for this reason we can
say that the same is true of the Russians and Chinese.
This is why he emphasized the necessity of finding "the head of the
serpent" - if you knew who the conspirators were, and got the names to the
right people, they could perhaps stage a coup and head the thing off. But
he saw no way of finding out who they were. When I said, well isn't it
better to give it a go, rather than say, I can't stop the bombs from going
off, I'll try to save a few at least; he said no - if people are gong to
die, you should let them die peacefully, rather than have them spend their
last days in panic and terror.
How considerate of him. So he goes and talks about this horrible
conspiracy to a person who just explained to him that he can reach
nearly every technogeek on the planet...
After all, when "5000" bombs went off it
would be "like the planet passing through the sun"
Wrong. Bombs are big, destructive things, but _anything_ humans
can do at this point pales to insignificance beside, say, a big solar
flare. If we were to somehow drop the planet into the Sun, the atmo-
sphere would go, as would the oceans, soil and rock would melt if not
vaporize, etc. If every nuclear bomb were to explode simultaneously
with every reactor melting down, we wouldn't get anywhere near there.
From the alt.destroy.the.earth point of view, this is a crying shame,
but it is true.
- "all the oxygen in the atmosphere being destroyed".
This is, as we say in the trade, lizardshit. Oxygen - and every other
kind of atom - would have some interesting things done to it in the
immediate vicinity of a blast, but even a few miles away the chances
of it getting "transmuted" are very, very low. You'd have to worry much
more about getting engulfed in a firestorm - and no, the bombs would
not set off enough fires to burn up all the oxygen.
I had to this point not expressed any
criticisms of what he had said, simply in order to find out what he might
say, but the idea that after such an event everything would be over and
done with stuck me as absurd. "It might be over quickly in the major
population centres, where the bombs go off directly overhead, but if
you're outside..."
It is absurd. You're right. (You had me worried, though, Mitch...)
In any case, I didn't get much of a chance to argue
this, because at this point *another* guy happened along, who overheard us
talking about bombs, and said "You have more to worry about than atomic
bombs these days... There's the electromagnetic bomb." When I asked him
what that might be, he said it "used" electromagnetic radiation to "turn
one atom into another". "It's a bit like alchemy." I asked him for
details, and he said "It changes the number of electrons that the atom can
hold... You happen to have run into a drunken physicist."
There isn't an electromagnetic bomb. There certainly can't be one
that does what he described. Electromagnetism is the force that
holds the electrons in the atom, and governs interactions between
atoms, but the number of electrons an atom can hold is determined
solely by the number of protons in its nucleus, and is, in fact, equal
to the number of protons in its nucleus. This number gets changed in
one of three ways: A. Radiocative decay, B. Nuclear fission or
C. Nuclear fusion. Electromagnetism is so much weaker than the
intra-nuclear forces as to make it impossible to change nuclei with
it. If this person was a physicist, it was either only in the sense
an incompetent hack like Fritjof Capra can be considered a physicist,
or he making fun of you and your friend to the point where he probably
ruptured his lungs laughing afterwards. (I have serious problems
restraining my sarcasm - no real offense intended. May I recommend
J. Trefil's _From Atoms to Quarks_ as a nice, non-technical intro-
duction to the wonderful world of atomic and subatomic physics? It
got me interested in this business in the first place...)
Now this "electromagnetic bomb" idea might be defended by the usual
"Oh, that's the _old_ theory. In my new one it is clear that-" But
it so happens that the current theory of electromagnetism, quantum
electrodynamics, is the single most successful theory in physics
today. There is a wonderful and not at all technical explication
of it by one of its founders: R. Feynmann's _QED: The Strange Theory
of Light and Matter_. The evidence needed to abandon it would have
to be compelling indeed - and it's not forthcoming.
The first guy said, "Oh well, I don't want to hear about it if there's
something even worse,
Typical.
it doesn't change our situation..." and said something about the
importance of dealing with the conspiracy behind the weapons machine. The
second guy said, "Oh well, if you're talking about conspiracies, the
military-industrial complex isn't the *real* one", and I said, "So what
is? The Committee of 300?" but it turned out he just meant the Masons.
"You don't get anywhere in US politics without being a Mason.
In re the Masons: crap.
(The first
guy had already said that *they* have lookouts everywhere, in the fof
organizations which are backing or banking the group which is planning to
use the bombs: such groups include the Illuminati, the Masons, the Roman
Catholic Church...)
Of coure. Just how far back does this merry little cabal go, and
what were they planning to do _before_ nukes were invented? This
couldn't, by any conceivable stretch of the imagination, predate
the discovery of the nucleus in 190-something. (THE ILLUMINATI???)
At this point I coldn't stand the cold any more and didn't want to
pursue any of these matters right there and then, partly because I wasn't
sure *where* I would want to start asking for clarifications,
justifications, etc. So I simply got the second guy's number (I haven't
yet phoned him; it's now only 9 am); and I may well run into the first guy
again, if I keep my eyes open.
Okay. I have basically attempted to describe what I heard without
inserting too many critical comments. About the only factor I haven't
mentioned so far, I think, is that the first guy also said a few times that
he thought the whole thing was probably Satanic ("this is the devil's
planet now"), which I guess means that he has an outlook similar to that
expressed in (for example) the Australian book "The Cosmic Conspiracy",
which alleges that human geopolitics is a battleground for cosmic forces
of Good and Evil (not a rare claim, actually).
Indeed. This is probably one of the most blatant and disgusting
forms of human _hubris_ - the idea that a bunch of plains apes are
the focus of the Power That Be, who have nothing better to do than
intervene in our sensely and bloody quarrels. It was marginally
defensible to to hold such views in the time of Augustine; by the
time of Hegel and Marx it had become embarassing to persons of
sense; today it is probably pathological. (N.B. people holding
such views _never_ think the world is in the hands of Good at the
moment.)
Anyhow, if you inhabit a
reality-tunnel anywhere near that of consensus reality, you can probably
think of lots of reasons not to believe this world-picture. I know I can
think of all sorts of arguments against the idea of a (possibly satanic)
conspiracy to bring about a nuclear apocalypse.
"Reality-tunnel" seems altogether appropriate for such world-views
as his: Narrow, blinkered and dark.
But, I also recognize that
my major motivation in thinking up counter-arguments is simply that I do
not *want* to believe in such a conspiracy, since to put it mildly it
makes life somewhat more difficult.
True enough, but that doesn't invalidate the arguments. The fact that
geometry originated in measuring land for taxation purposes does not
make geometry invalid for anarchists or objectors to taxation. Your
friend's statements of fact have proven either false, dubious on the
basis of other evidence, or simply lunatic.
What future for extropian hopes such
as indefinite life extension wheneverything's gong to go up in a few years
anyway? And the problem is, how can anyone who is *not* a member of the
hypothetical conspiracy prove that the conspiracy is *not* there, unless
they actually are part of the "inner core"?
Proving such negatives is indeed difficult. But consider this: How
can you prove that invisible, intangible pink furry gremlins that
feed on petroleum aren't what _really_ make cars go, and that they
live in the cylinders of the engine? Is there any reason to believe
in this conspiracy? No. Is there reason to think this conspiracy
is a piece of paranoid raving? Yes. Would it be rational to believe
in it? Only if you have a preference for more rather than less
falsehood and insanity.
You can remove the part about Satanism and still retain the idea of a
conspiracy whose aim is global genocide. This idea I have actually seen
expressed before,
It's not _that_ uncommon. At least a few science fiction novels on
this theme, besides the usual paranoid screeds...
in the final chapter of "High Weirdness by Mail", of all
places. In stark contrast to the cuttingly sarcastic reviews which make up
90% of the rest of the book, that whole last chapter is devoted to
excerpts from a newsletter called "Further Connections" put out by Waves
Forest (PO Box 768, Monterey CA 93940, USA). Here are Ivan Stang's comments:
"One of the Robin Hoods of suppressed data. Anyone who wants to
seriously look into the possibility that major scientific breakthroughs
ARE being hidden by THEM owe it to themselves to send for his info, which
includes listings and addresses for many fringe research groups not
covered in this book. Not funny at all... horrifying, yes;
outlandish-sounding, HELL yes; but funny, no. Very persuasive, sobering,
almost poetic essay/rants with attached bibliographies on the various
technologies and metaphysical discoveries. Be prepared, however, for some
real shocks to your programming. $4 should cover expenses for the first
mailing, which contains more than 400 sources. A penny a source, folks.
You gonna pass it up? *Huh, boy?*" (I have sent away for this mailing
myself; no response so far.)
Some technological innovations might well be surpressed. But as a
test, when this mailing arrives, see if there are any references
to the "gasoline pill" story. If so, Mr. Forest (or Ms. Forest)
is one of those wonderful, gullible cranks this country produces
so well...
And some words from Waves Forest:
Imagine you are among only a few hundred masters of a whole planet's
resources, with five billion slaves surronding you, many in bad shape
because you've mishandled some resources, many others starting to wake up
to the situation. In your attempts to strengthen your psition you have
seriously mistreated a lot of them, or hired others to do so, and you are
slowly losing the struggle to keep the extent of your crimes and cruelties
a secret.
If you were in such a position, would it feel safe to share with all
citizens the advanced technolgies developed in your top-secret "defense"
laboratories? Some of these discoveries could free mankind from dependence
on your resource monopolies, and provide tools for a mass uprising and
overthrow of your regimes.
Why would the defense laboratories work on such things _in_the_first_
place_? Fortuitous (?sp) discoveries are not as common in science as
the mythology makes them out to be - and notice that now, mind you,
you have to rope in hundreds or thousands of scientists, engineers
and technicians into the conspiracy. Not just ones working on, say,
refinements in bomb technology, but alternate energy sources, advanced
communications, etc., etc.
When a man does something his fellows would strongly object to, and
decides to keep the misdeed a secret, he mentally withdraws somewhat from
the others, because now he has to watch himself to make sure doesn't
mention what he did. More misdeeds bring on further withdrawal. The
intensity of the misdeeds and the secrecy surrounding them can increase to
astonishing proprtions.
It has actually reached the point where certain very powerful men, to
ensure their presonal safety and the perpetuation of their empires, plan
to kill off two thirds of the world's population and overtly enslave the rest.
Since most of the general public just somehow doesn't feel right about
genocide, the blatant exterminations of the '30s and '40s have been
replaced by artificially induced wars, plagues, accidents, and "natural"
disasters.
What's a naturally induced war? An example of a artificially induced
plague? (Forest says "AIDS," then we shouldn't worry because Their
genetic engineers are incompetent - it's hard to catch and takes years
to kill. If you really want a planet-killer, look to the pneumonic
plague or influenza. I worked out a scheme for that once, and would
be happy to send you the details.) Now, about those natural
disasters...
Earhquakes can be induced artificially by precise placement and timing
of nuclear "tests". The shock waves sprad out over the globe, then
recombine at various harmonic intervals around the sphere to deliver a
strong jolt at the desired location within forty-eight hours of the
initial blast.
The physics of this is so utterly horrible I'm at a loss for words...
There's not enough energy in bombs, the shock waves don't "recombine
at various harmonic intervals" and they definitely don't delay 48
hrs. This seems like a descendant of Tesla's shake-the-earth-to-bits
scheme...
So there it is again, the idea that "certain very powerful men... plan
to kill off two thirds of the world's population and overtly enslave the
rest." Hell, I recall a similar idea - although the motivation here was a
religious/occult hope of achieving immortality - on the part of the Saures
in "Illuminatus!"
This is very different from blowing the world to smithereens with
nukes. I find it less incredible (in the litteral sense, i.e.,
unbelievable) but by no stretch of the imagination persuasive.
As you point out, it is not an uncommon idea, certainly not
in the fringe culture - which includes thee and me and he.
So what I want to know is this. Where did this idea originate? Does
anyone know more about Waves Forest, about the secret 600 at the top of
the CIA, about the logistical problems of organizing such a conspiracy, of
what forms this idea has taken, who communicates it, who argues against it?
I know nothing about Waves Forest; the secret 600 at the top of the
CIA are, to the best of my knowledge, the creation of his fevered
brain; the logistical problems are immense - the cabal must be at
once everyhwere, omnipotent, omniscient, indiscoverable and its
goals and structure intimately known to the conspiracy theorist.
This is a tall order to fill.
PS: If the "first guy" of my story is in fact wholly correct, and some
member of the Conspiracy reads this post, then according to the argument
he gave the bombs will be set off now rather than later...
If the conspiracy can't prevent a homeless religious fanatic
(i.e., someone who litterally believes in Satan) from finding out
about its existence, goals and methods, and can't keep a stray
technogeek & known extropian from spreading the news across the Net,
what CAN they accomplish.
PPS: I have just recalled another anecdote from the same guy's monologue.
He said he approached a few US sailors (on shore leave here, I presume)
with a similar set of claims and ideas, and asked what they thought of it;
and one guy said, "Well, if I was to give you my opinion I would probably
agree, and probably so wold my friends, but we can't give you opinions
because when we join the Navy we sign a little piece of paper that
forbids us from expressing political opinions, and we'll get shot for
treason if we violate that paper..." This is one claim (amongst many!) of
which I am sceptical - can anyone confirm or deny this? I can imagine a
courtmartial, dishonourable discharge, etc - but execution?
Sailors on shore leave are not noted for sobriety or seriousness.
Some people humor cranks like your friend, others tell them they are
lunatics. This depends on how violent-seeming the crank is, how
entertaining the rant, etc. Which is more likely: That They are
known to every grunt in the Navy, or that some drunken sailors
were having fun with a semi-entertaining lunatic?
Government employees are restricted in their expression of political
opinions - a bizarre and senseless piece of law, but there nonetheless.
(They can vote, but not volunteer for campgains, donate more than nom-
inal sums, etc.) The penalties are not, of course, execution for
treason, but getting fired - in the military, a dishonorable
discharge, I suppose. (My mother is a biochemist at the National
Institutes of Health & an ex-Trotskyite - every four years the law gets
her _extremely_ upset...). BTW, in the United States "treason" is
defined in the Constitution, and consists _solely_ of providing aid
and comfort to the enemies of the repbulic, punishable not by execution
but by imprisonment - admittedly for a fairly lengthy number of years.
Your friend might mean simply "get shot" when he says "get shot for
treason," but it does little to bolster my confidence in his accuracy
as to fact.
\qix\necro
Newsgroups: alt.horror.cthulhu,alt.necromicon
Subject: NecroMicon FAQ
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 92 05:13:09 GMT
The alt.necromicon F.A.Q.
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Q. What is the NecroMicon?
The NecroMicon (literally, "The Book of Dead Mice") is a near-legendary text,
also known as "Al As-if". It was written in Damascus in 730 A.D. by Abdul
Alhirra (known irreverently in the modern West as: "Bill the Cat"), of
whom little is known, other than that he travelled widely and may have
been the originator of the "Ackankar" cult.
Q. Where may the NecroMicon be found?
Unfortunately, the original Arab text has been lost, and only fragments
remain of the various translations that were attempted. The most notable
such translation was the work of an otherwise unknown cleric called "the
mysterious Wormius"; we even know of his name only through tertiary sources
(for example, the fine historical researches of Dr Phileus Sadowsky). Most
likely Wormius encountered Alhirra in the course of an inspection of booty
brought back from the Crusades.
It is believed that the exiled cabalist Ignatz Eliezer carried a copy of
Wormius' translation with him to Prague, where he met Dr John-D, the
famous English magician and rapper (best known in this regard for introducing
the magickal cry "IAO!" to rap, the modern form of which is "Yo!"). John-D in
turn translated Wormius into Enochian, encoded the result with a complex
multivalent substitution cipher, and sold the new manuscript to Rudolf II
of Bavaria, as the work of Roger Bacon. Over the centuries many scholars of
the occult puzzled over John-D's handiwork; perhaps the most notorious of
these was Adam Weishaupt, who as a young man was fascinated by the mysterious
"illuminated manuscript".
Rudolf's collection was broken up with the passage of time, with his
collection of rare manuscripts making its way to the venerable Jorge's famous
library in Italy. It survived the fire that destroyed Jorge's abbey and
took his life, and along with the other remaining fragments of Jorge's
collection was stored at a Jesuit college for many years.
In 1912 it was discovered there by Wilfred Voynich, a Polish scientist
and lover of rare books. He was also the son-in-law of George Boole, the
logician, and he may have had the impression that the manuscript contained
certain ideas of Bacon's that anticipated modern combinatorics.
Ever since then there has been a global effort to decipher the Voynich
Manuscript, as it is now known. A history of this effort can be found in
"The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma", by Mary D'Empirio (ADA 070
618; US Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service,
Washington DC, 1978). Several times solutions have been announced, but all
have been found wanting. The text of the manuscript itself is available via
anonymous ftp from rand.org (192.5.14.33) (/pub/jim/voynich.tar.Z).
Q. What is the content of the NecroMicon?
The book is generally agreed to have contained Alhirra's metaphysical
speculations. "Bill the Cat" appears to have outlined a baroque cosmology
in which our world is one of many "fabricated" worlds, made for various
purposes. Alhirra's philosophy is not unusual for its time in possessing
teleological elements, but what truly sets it apart is that the purpose of
our world is seen to be the performance of a giant *calculation*
(ironic, given Voynich's likely presumptions about the manuscript's
content, mentioned above). In this respect he is remarkably modern (see,
for example, Edward Fredkin's recent attempts to view the universe as a
computational process).
From the modern viewpoint, Alhirra subsequently diminishes the
attractiveness of his thought by then introducing his pet obsessions -
cryptozoology and numerology. He believed that the overseers of this vast
computation (the "Archons" or "Sysadmins", in occult jargon), although
originating in another dimension ("the spaces between"), had incarnated in
a form visible to us - as *mice*. (Hence the book's title.) He believed
that their centre of operations was "an alien city in a cold land to the
north" - presumably the Antarctic. Alhirra had several visions of this
city from space, perhaps while scrying (these visions later formed the basis
of the "Piri Reis" map); he described the city's physical environment, and
its flora and fauna, in considerable detail, and it is for this reason that
the NecroMicon is also sometimes known as "The Penguin Opus".
Alhirra also attached great significance to the number 42, suggesting
that this number somehow lay at the heart of the planetary entelechy, but
never explaining why. It is a frequent observation that 42 is twice 21,
the number of characters in John-D's Enochian alphabet, but otherwise no
one know what "Bill" meant by this. Colin Low has written that Alhirra's
scrying technique involved the use of "an incense composed of olibanum,
storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish", and it has been surmised that the
NecroMicon was not meant to be understood except by individuals who had
ingested certain rare psychedelic plants. (For more on this line of
thought, see ethnopharmacologist Terence McKenna's article on the Voynich
manuscript in Issue #7 of "Gnosis" magazine, and the scene in Wilson and
Shea's "Illuminatus!" in which Weishaupt attempts to fathom the NecroMicon.)
Alhirra himself may have been unhinged by his exploration of
consciousness. He is said to have written that to free oneself from "the
click of the mouse" (an unclear phrase, apparently referring to the means
of their alleged control) one must become "like that cat, dwelling in the
midpoint between Something and Nothing, which is neither alive nor dead."
Perhaps this is similar to the sentiment that one should be "in the world,
but not of it." In any case, Alhirra is said to have met his end while
standing on a chair, literally frightened to death by his invisible
persecutors; his last words were, "Ia! Cthulhu ack-phffftagn..."
Q. What about the Necronomicon?
A. A modern superstition, in my opinion, but there are some people
on alt.horror.cthulhu who take it seriously.
