Model Reality

I don’t know

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, “What happens after death?”

The Roshi replied, “I don’t know.”

Wavy protested, “But you’re a Zen Master!”

“Yes,” the Roshi admitted, “but I’m not a dead Zen Master.”

His passing comes at an interesting time for me. Many, many years ago, I read the The Illuminatus Trilogy and enjoyed it immensely. It moved me, but in ways that were unclear. I wasn’t the only one. The boys over at Boing-Boing put out a call for help a few months ago which I answered with a donation. In reading the post, I learned about his most influential book (not his most popular), The Cosmic Trigger, which I purchased and am still reading.

It’s a good book, written with his trademark tongue-in-cheek humor, that explores his travels down the path of his life.

So I’ve been seeing a number of posts from my freaky/mystical communities about his passing, where he was revered luminary and jester. But then I came across this today: Death of libertarian, his obituary in the excellent Democracy in America blog, run by the Economist.

Some quick back story: I work for a company founded by a bunch of hardcore libertarians. I was raised a capital-L Liberal and even have some capital-C Communists as my ancestors. As a younger man, I was active in Habonim Dror, the worldwide Labor Zionist youth movement. Over time, as we are wont to do, my politics have shifted. I’ve become much more cynical towards traditional political affiliations and have a lot more sympathy for notions of smaller government as it applies to the bedroom (but not the boardroom). At the same time, I’ve had some trouble with the classic libertarian viewpoints regarding things like helping the poor and taxes.

The obituary quotes Wilson:

Once, when explaining why he didn’t vote for Libertarian Party candidate Ed Clark, Wilson wrote “I am not that kind of Libertarian, really; I don’t hate poor people.”
…
According to Cato, More than 15 percent of Americans are libertarians rather than big-government liberals or conservatives. Democracy in America would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the passing of Mr Wilson, one of the most influential members of that small band since Ayn Rand.

And that pretty much sums it up. I guess I’m more of a Guns & Dope Libertarian (how very Burning Man of me!).

Reason’s Brian Doherty, also mentioned in the DiA post has some interesting comments on how RAW influenced him:

He was my gateway to Welles and Chandler, to Leary and Fuller, to Pound and Reich, to conspiracy theory and libertarianism, and to all the ideas and experiences, intellectual, aesthetic, and actual, that rolled from those varied and fascinating entryways into art, ideas, and living. I hope I can do good by the principles he helped imbue in me. He excelled as both novelist and essayist; he was a noble steward of the ideas he espoused, a brilliant and passionate popularizer, and the characters and scenarios and approaches to fiction of his novels reward constant reading with constant pleasure and insight–he was a pop-Pynchon of sorts in his sprawling, comic-serious approach to Big Crazy Ideas, who got a thousandth of the respect and delivered a thousand times the joy and humanity.

I, and many others, will continue to read his work with both intellectual and aesthetic pleasure from now and on into the limitless human future he helped so many of us to see. If anyone deserved to reach techno-immortality, it was him. That’s what’s making me saddest right now. The best of him remains, and will always.

That all said, two words should suffice. as Pound said of Eliot on his passing (and I know this because I read Robert Anton Wilson): Read him.

Wonkette’s obituary has some more choice tidbits:

His platform for the mostly fictional Guns & Dope Party went like this, in part:

We advocate

1. guns for those who want them, no guns forced on those who don’t want them (pacfists, Quakers etc.)
2. drugs for those who want them, no drugs forced on those who don’t want them (Christian Scientists etc.)
3. an end to Tsarism and a return to constitutional democracy
4. equal rights for ostriches.

And here’s a little Poor Richard’s-esque homily:

Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”

Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”

The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”

Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own fucking business.”