Escape Your Tribe

IMPORTANT!

READ THIS CAREFULLY!

     What I have been saying — the important lesson of this book — can be put into two simple imperatives:
1. Never believe totally in anybody else’s BS.
2. Never believe totally in your own BS.

     These formulations are my own, but the basic idea here, of course, derives from Gotama Buddha.
     If you do not retain some zeteticism* about all ideas, however appealing they may be, you have entered hypnosis, as I entered hypnosis when placed in the Catholic school to be “educated” by the nuns — a bunch of ignorant women who had been so deeply hypnotized themselves that they remained mentally crippled for life.
     In the famous story, the Buddha was asked, “Are you God?”
     “No,” he replied.
     “Are you a saint?”
     “No.”
     "Then what are you?”
     “I am awake.”
     He meant that he was able to see who he was, where he was, and what was going on around him, because he was no longer blinded by Belief Systems.
*A term from ancient Greek philosophy revived by Dr. Marcello Truzzi, because the similar term “skepticism” has been pre-empted by certain entrenched dogmatists. The modern so-called skeptic accepts the dogmas of the reigning Establishment and is cynical only about ideas that are new, original or Heretical. The zetetic is skeptical of all dogmas.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 72.


     ROC: In all your research, have you ever come close to believing in the One Big Conspiracy that controls everything?
     WILSON: Never. There are three basic attitudes toward the universe: atheism, polytheism and monotheism. Metaphorically, you can apply these views to history also. Atheist history says it all happened by accident, polytheism says it happened as the clash of rival forces, and monotheism says it happened because of one dominant intelligence. I don’t believe everything happens by accident, so atheism is out for me. On the other hand, I agree with H. L. Mencken, who said he wasn’t a monotheist because the world looked to him like it was designed by a committee. The world would make some kind of sense if there was one group of “insiders” who really run everything. Since the world obviously doesn’t make sense, there is no such group. There are just rival coalitions trying to become the group that runs the world, which is probably just as hopeless as trying to become God and “run” the universe. These Apes of God all get defeated in the end by what I call the Snafu Principle.
     ROC: What’s that?
     WILSON: In the power game, the more successful you become, the more motive people have for lying to you. They lie to flatter you, to avoid contradicting your prejudices, to keep their jobs, to tell you what you want to hear, etc. Have you ever told the truth, the whole truth, to anybody from the government? It’s the same in any authoritarian organization, be it the army, a corporation or a patriarchal family. People say what those in power above them want to hear. In the big power struggles, the most successful conspiracy of the decade becomes the stupidest conspiracy of the next decade, because it never hears what might offend its self-image. Communication is only possible between equals. The power game creates total communication jam and everybody near the top drifts slowly but inexorably into a kind of schizoid fantasy. Then they get replaced by younger, hungrier predators who are not successful enough yet to frighten everybody into lying to them, and hence have at least a partial knowledge of what the hell is really going on.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, pp. 146-147.