The Wisdom of Robert Anton Wilson

Fnord:

I see as many positive possibilities as negative ones, and since the conclusion has not yet arrived I don't know which is going to happen, so it seems to me that worrying about the bad possibilities just gives you ulcers and makes you a generally miserable person and drags down the party wherever you go, whereas looking at the positives and spreading word about the positive possibilities keeps you high and happy and might even cheer up a few other people too, so since we don't know why not choose the happy path? Besides, as a Buddhist I really profoundly don't give a fuck! There's a little Chinese saying - "The wise become Confucian in good times, Buddhist in bad times and Taoist in old age" - that makes more sense to me all the time; I believe in Confucianism given in the sense of etiquette and good manners, courtesy and at least a minimum standard of decency for everybody. I believe in Buddhism to the extent of detachment because this is a pretty bad planet and a lot of bad things happen so you don't wanna get too attached to anything, and I'm becoming more and more of a Taoist because after reading about 20 different translations of the Tao Te Ching and looking up some of the Ideograms in my Chinese English dictionary and reading commentaries I think the basic message of Taoism is that it doesn't matter, fuck it all [laughs] - I have all three attitudes simultaneously, I can make things better by being nice to people, it doesn't really matter in Taoism and it's all a burning house anyway, so don't get too attached to it - that's Buddhism. I think it makes a nice mixture...

...In Illuminatus! [published 1970] I had terrorists blow one wall off the Pentagon - just like happened, and in Schrödinger's Cat [1980] I had Wall Street blown up just like what happened and I don't claim this is ESP or precognition, it's just common sense. The United States cannot go on bombing two thirds of the world year after year, decade after decade, over and over without somebody hitting back eventually, I knew it had to happen, you don't need ESP you just need a little horse sense. CNN keeps referring to it as "the day the world changed," well the world didn't change; people have been dropping munitions on one another ever since Nobel invented modern munitions. People love dropping bombs on one another, it's one of the favourite human pastimes, they're almost willing to give up football , I mean - it's been going on for ages, the only thing that changed is that the United States has been doing most of the bombing for the last 50 years and everybody got used to that, oh yeah we got to bomb another country for their own good, it's only collateral damage. The United States gets bombed and they say the world changed. The world didn't change, it's just the United States got included in with the rest of the world. If you go around bombing people year after year, decade after decade; you'll have somebody bombing you back, Jesus!, no, no; that's not the reason they did it, they hate us for our freedom , all the freedoms like the freedom to pee into a jar before you get a job interview, that's the kind of freedom we really need.