Lumen 22-5

Book Report

 

Posted – July 12, 2022

 

Irrelevant tid bit – Warning: dates on the calendar are closer than they appear.

 

 

This is about three interesting, although difficult to read, book(s) – The Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.  The three books in the trilogy are “The Eye in the

Pyramid”, “The Golden Apple”, and “Leviathan”.  A Rolling Stone review included in the book says, “A hundred pages in I couldn’t figure out why I was wasting my time with this nonsense.”  I agree with that evaluation as the book has many characters, does not follow any consistent time frame (it jumps from 1500 to 1975), and several times develops a complex story line only to then tell you it is all false – very confusing.

 

So why tell you about such a disaster?  The story is not that important, but it explores interesting ideas and is thought provoking, using a science-fiction format.  It was copyrighted in 1975 and reflects the anti-establishment, anti-government, pro-drug attitude of that time.  The anti-government theme is not so much against the U.S. government, as it questions the need for any government regardless of its structure or principles.

 

A few quotations that you may or may not find interesting.

 

       It is dangerous to understand new things too quickly.  Almost always, we                     have not understood them. 

 

 

            It is bad for a man to be obeyed too often.

 

 

            The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only the strength of

        authoritarian society but also its weakness.

     

    Further investigation revealed that Oedipuski had been a construction worker and until very recently well liked on his job, behaving in a normal, down-to-earth manner, bitching about the government, cursing the lazy bums on Welfare, hating niggers, shouting obscene remarks at good-looking dolls who passed construction sites and – when the odds were safely above the 8-to-1 level – joining other middle-aged workers in attacking young men with long hair, peace buttons, and other un-American stigmata.  Then ... all that changed.  He began bitching about the bosses as well as the government – almost sounding like a communist at times; when somebody else cussed the crumb-bums on Welfare, Stan remarked thoughtfully, “Well, you know, our union keeps them from getting jobs, fellows, so what else can they do but go on Welfare?  Steal?”  He even said once, when some of the guys were good-humoredly giving the finger and making other gallant noises and signals toward a passing eighteen-year-old girl, “Hey, you know, that might really be embarrassing and scaring her...!”  Worse yet, his own hair began to grow surprisingly long in back, and his wife told friends that he didn’t look at TV much anymore but instead sat in a chair most evenings reading books. 

 

    (And Semper Cuni Lictus ... passed an olive garden and saw the Seventeen ... and with them was the Eighteenth, the one they had crucified the Friday before... The Eighteenth, whathisname, the preacher, had set up a wheel and was distributing cards to them.  Now, he turned the wheel and called out the number at which it stopped.  The centurion watched, in growing amazement, as the process was repeated several times, and the cards were marked each time the wheel stopped.  Finally, the big one, Simon, shouted “Bingo!”  ... the luminous figure said, “Do this in commemoration of me.”

 

“I thought we were supposed to do the bread and wine bit in commemoration of         you?” Simon objected.

 

“Do both,” the ghostly one said.  “The bread and wine is too symbolic and arcane         for some folks.  This one is what will bring in the mob...You, Luke, don’t write             that down.  This is part of the secret teachings.”

 

 

     “What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one?  What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbors that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him?  What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children?  What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned it?  And he took another child who had obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors?  What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes?  What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even the suburbs?

  

 

     Human society can be structured either according to the principle of authority or according to the principle of liberty.  Authority is a static social configuration in which people act as superiors and inferiors; a sado-masochistic relationship.  Liberty is a dynamic social configuration in which people act as equals; an erotic relationship.  In every interaction between people, either Authority or Liberty is the dominant factor.  Families, churches, lodges, clubs, and corporations are either more authoritarian than libertarian or more libertarian than authoritarian.

       

 

    It becomes obvious as we proceed that the most pugnacious and intolerant form of authority is the State, which even today dares to assume an absolutism which the Church itself has long ago surrendered and to enforce obedience with the techniques of the Church’s old and shameful Inquisition.  Every form of authoritarianism is, however, a small “State,” even if it has a membership of only two.  Freud’s remark to the effect that the delusion of one man is neurosis and the delusion of many men is religion can be generalized: The authoritarianism of one man is crime and the authoritarianism of many men is the State.

 

 

     It seems at first glance that authority could not exist at all if all men were cowards or if no men were cowards, but flourishes as it does only because most men are cowards and some men are thieves.  Actually, the inner dynamics of cowardice and submission on the one hand and of heroism and rebellion on the other are seldom consciously realized either by the ruling class or the servile class.  Submission is identified not with cowardice but with virtue, rebellion not with heroism but with evil.  To the Romans, slave-owners, Spartacus was not a hero and the obedient slaves were not cowards; Spartacus was a villain and the obedient slaves were virtuous.  The obedient slaves believed this also.  The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.

 

 

     ... in pre-literate societies taboos on the spoken word are more numerous and more Draconic than at any more complex level of social organization.  With the invention of written speech – hieroglyphic, ideographic, or alphabetical – the taboos are shifted to this medium; there is less concern with what people say and more concern with what they write.  (Some of the first societies to achieve literacy, such as Egypt and the Mayan culture of ancient Mexico, evidently kept a knowledge of their hieroglyphs a religious secret which only the higher orders of the priestly and royal families were allowed to share.)  The same process repeats endlessly: Each step forward in the technology of communication is more heavily tabooed than the earlier steps.  Thus, in America today (post-Lenny Bruce), one seldom hears of convictions for spoken blasphemy or obscenity; prosecution of books still continues, but higher courts increasingly interpret the laws in a liberal fashion, and most writers feel fairly confident that they can publish virtually anything; movies are growing almost as desacralized as books, although the fight is still heated in this area; television, the newest medium, remains encased in Neolithic taboo.

(Remember this was written in the early 1970’s long before the internet, e-mail, texts, even before fax machines.  The prediction that the newest communication medium gets the most censorship may or may not be true, but it does seem that TV content has become more flexible, at least on the cable channels.)

 

End of quotations and end of book report.  Comments?