Korzibski (Robert Anton Wilson)

8/2/2019 Korzibski (Robert Anton Wilson)

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By Robert Anton WilsonT h e M a p I s N o t t h e T e r r i t o r y : T h e F u t u r e I s N o t t h e P a s t

Note : This address is printed without censorship, as it isBulletin policy to record these events as they happened . - d .At the Harvard Club of New York City, November 7, 1997

Wll, first I did meet my wife through t heNew York Soci ety for Gener al Seman-tics, but her name is not Ann [as given in theintroductory remarks] ; it is Arlen . That is ofa bs o l u t e l y n o i m p o r t a n c e t o a n y b o d y h e r e

except to me----I'd like to get her na me right .

The on ly other person I know named Arlen i s

Arlen Spector, who is a man who invented the

magic bullet theory, which expl ained the Ken-

nedy assassination by the bullet turning 360 .

Where do I live? That's a very interesting

question . According to the post office I live in

Santa Cruz, Cali fornia ; that's Spanish for h o l y

c r o s s . If Jesus had lived late r, it woul d be h o l y

l e t h a l i n j e c t i o n , I assume. The pos t office cl aimsI l i v e t h e r e . Everybody around that area cl aims

they live in Capitola . Well, virtually everybody ;

as a matte r of fact, if I walk a hal f bloc k from

my house I am definitely in Capitola because

there is a shopping center there, and all the

stores in the shopp ing center advertise as being

in Capitol a . How come I'm in Santa Cruz?Because t he post office put me there . A couple

of years ago the post office sent out ballots sa y-

ing, "We are thinking of rezoning, how many

of y o u w o u l d r a t h e r be c o u n t e d a s p a r t of

Ca p i t o l a ?" An d i t s e ems a lmo s t e v e r ybo d y

voted that the y want ed to be part of Capitola .

And apparent ly th e post office decided th at was

too much work, because they sent out a notic e

saying, `Apparently our questionnaire wasn't

worded proper ly and 80% of the people wouldrather be in Capitola, but we don't think they

u n d e r s t o o d t h e qu e s t i o n s o w e ' l l s e n d y o u

another questionnaire later." That was a bout

three years ago . We haven't gotten another

questionnaire. I thi nk the post office doesn't

want to go to the trou ble of changing all their

forms .

But, whether I live in Santa Cruz or Capitola

became even more confusing whe n something

was stol en out of our car . And since the post

office says we are in Santa Cruz, I called the

Santa Cruz police . When they got our address

they said you're not in Santa Cruz, you're in

Capitola . So we called the Capitola police, and

when we gave them our address they saidyou're not in Capitola, y ou're in Live Oak, call

the sheriff. So we call ed the sheriff and he said,

yeah, y ou're in Live Oak . So now I know I live

in Live Oa k according to the sheriff, Santa

Cr u z a c c o r d i n g t o t h e p o s t offi c e , a n d i n

Capitola according to th e Santa Cruz police .

T h i s i s n o t a t r i v i a l ma t t e r . It's actually

quadrivial .

Back in the seventies I was involved in the

Physics Consciousness Research Group, which

include d Jack Sarfati, who has the wildest Web

site you can find on the World Wide Web ; Nick

Herbert, who has written Quantum Reality ,

M~ z T L z T ( ~ ] [ ? J R I zEz 7 r z r z r z00z0 0 z 0 0 z 0 0 r z r r z I t S ri z R 7 r 7~L~fJzlr2l f2lrzirzir2J0r2Jr2JT)rzrzirzrrJrrJrrJzrzirzr2JrzirzzzzR1RJFD0r2J0rzirzirvl? LLJ?J21


2/12

12F a s t e r t h a n L i g h t , a n d o t h e r i n t e r e s t i n g b o o k s

o n q u a n t u m m e c h a n i c s ; F r i t j o f C a p r a , w h o w r o t e

T h e T a o o f Physics ; F r e d W o l f , w h o h a s w r i t t e n

s o m a n y b o o k s o n q u a n t u m m e c h a n i c s t h a t I

c a n h a r d l y b e g i n t o l i s t t h e m a l l (The Body

Quantum a n d s e v e r a l o t h e r s ) . I w as the resident

s c i e n c e f i c t i o n w r i t e r . Y o u s e e , m y f i r s t b o o k ,

Ill uminatus-not m y f i r s t b o o k , b u t t h e f i r s t

b o o k t o g e t a n y a t t e n t i o n ( I h a d t h r e e b o o k s

b e f o r e t h a t w h i c h n o b o d y p a i d a n y a t t e n t i o n

t o - n o w t h e y a r e a l l b a c k i n p r i n t a g a i n , b u t

t h a t i s a n o t h e r s t o r y ) - t h e f i r s t b o o k t h a t g o t a

l o t o f a t t e n t i o n , w a s p u b l i s h e d b y D e l l . A n d i t

w a s s u c h a s t r a n g e b o o k e v e n I a d m i t t e d i t w a s

s t r a n g e . I t w a s s o m e t h i n g u t t e r l y u n i q u e . I w a s

v e r y p r o u d w h e n T i m o t h y L e a r y c o m p a r e d i t

to U l y s s e s , b e c a u s e t h a t w a s a c t u a l l y w h a t I h a d

i n m i n d - s o m e t h i n g e q u a l l y r e vo l u t i o n a r y i n a

d i f f er e n t w a y . D e l l d i d n ' t k n o w h o w t o p a c k a g e

i t a n d p r o m o t e i t , s o t h e y c a l l e d i t s c i e n c e f i c -

tion . S o n o b o d y b o u g h t i t b u t s c i e n c e f i c t i o n

f ans . I t t o o k a b o u t t e n y e a r s b e f o r e o t h e r p e o -

p l e b e g a n t o d i s c o v e r i t .

M e a n w h i l e , b e c a u s e t h e f i r s t o n e w a s c a l l e d

s c i e n c e f i c t i o n , a l l m y b o o k s l a n d e d i n t h e s c i -

e n c e f i c t i o n s e c t i o n , i n c l u d i n g m y n o n f i c t i o n

w h i c h m a d e m e w o n d e r , a m I w r i t i n g s c i e n c e

f i c t i o n w h e n I t h i n k I ' m w r i t i n g s c i e n c e f a c t ?

W e l l , i t ' s a m a t t e r o f h o w y o u d e f i n e w h a t i s a

f a c t an d w h a t i s f ic t i on . A f t e r a w h i l e , w h e n

more and more of my books didn't seem to

b e l o n g i n s c i e n c e f i c t i o n , I w r o t e a d e t e c t i v e

s t o r y , I w r o t e t h r e e h i s t o r i c a l n o v e l s , a n d I

w r o t e a l o t o f b o o k s o n p s y c h o l o g y a n d s e m a n -

t i c s ; s o I s u d d e n l y f o u n d m y s e l f i n t h e N e w

A g e s e c t i o n , G o d k n o w s w h y , a n d t h e r e I w a s

n e x t t o V o n D a n i k e n , j u s t b e c a u s e m y n a m e

b e g i n s w i t h a " W " , a n d I s u f f e r e d f r o m t h a t

i n d i g n i t y f o r y e a r s . I j u s t h e a r d r ec e n t l y t h a t

Barnes & Noble has moved me from New Age

t o P h i l o s o p h y . S o I a m n o w n e x t t o W i t t g e n -

s t e i n , w h i c h i s w h e r e I ' d m u c h r a t h e r b e t h a n

n e x t t o V o n D a n i k e n .

T h e f a c t t h a t a c c o r d i n g t o o n e m o d e l o r g r i d

o r r e a l i t y t u n n e l I l i v e i n S a n t a C r u z a n d

General Semantics Bullet in .

a c c o r d i n g t o a n o t h e r o n e I l i v e i n C a p i t o l a a n d

a c c o r d i n g t o a t h i r d I l i v e i n L i v e O a k h a s

h e l p e d m e i m m e a s u r a b l y i n u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e

p r o b l e m s o f q u a n t u m m e c h a n i c s t h a t w e u s e d

t o d i s c u s s i n t h e P h y s i c s C o n s c i o u s n e s s R e -

s e a r c h G r o u p b a c k i n t h e s e v e n t i e s . O f c o u r se ,

w h a t i t a l l c o m e s d o w n t o . . .

I d o n ' t s p e a k i n E - P r i m e . I ' v e b e e n w r i t i n g

i n E - P r i m e a l o t l a t e l y ; I ' v e w r i t t e n t w o b o o k s

i n E - P r i m e , a n d m o s t o f m y r e c e n t a r t i c l e s i n

E-Prime . I h a v e n ' t y e t l e a r n e d t o s p e a k E -

P r i m e , s o i f y o u h e a r a n " i s " n o w a n d t h e n ,

n o n e o f u s a r e p e r f e c t . There was another

l a p s e ; t h e r e w a s a n " a r e " i n t h e r e .

T h e m a p i s n o t t h e t e r r i t o r y . I n q u a n t u m

p h y s i c s , y o u s e t u p o n e e x p e r i m e n t a l a p p a r a -

t u s - b u i l d u p a m a t h e m a t i c a l t h e o r y t o f i t t h e

results you get-and you have proven that

l i g h t t r a v e l s i n w a v e s . Y o u s e t u p a n o t h e r

e x p e r i m e n t a l a p p a r a t u s a n d a n o t h e r t h e o r e t i -

c a l s y s t e m t o a c c o u n t f o r w h a t y o u g e t , a n d y o u

prov e that light trav els in parti c l es . B a c k i n t h e

t w e n t i e s t h e r e w a s a b i g a r gu m e n t - w e l l , a c t u -

a l l y i t g o e s b a c k t o t h e p r e v i o u s c e n t u r y , b u t i t

h e a t e d u p i n t h e 1 9 2 0 s - d o e s l i g h t t r a v e l a s

w av es or as parti c l es ; i s l i g h t w a v e s o r i s i t p a r -

t i c l e s ? A n d t h e a n s w e r s e e m s t o b e t h a t l i g h t i s

w a v e s w h e n i t f e e l s l i k e b e i n g w a v e s , a n d i t ' s

p a r t i c l e s w h e n i t f e e l s l i k e b e i n g p a r t i c l e s .

L i g h t i s w a v es a n d l i g h t i s p a r t i c l e s . T h a t l e a d s

a l o t o f p h y s i c i s t s t o p r o m u l g a t e t h e t h e o r y

t h a t t h e u n i v e r s e i s i r r a t i o n a l - w h i c h I t h i n k i s

t h e w o r s t i d e n t i f i c a t i o n , ` i s ' o f ' i d e n t i t y , t h a t h a s

c o m e u p s o f a r i n t h i s d i s c u s s i o n .

S u p p o s i n g y o u r e f o r m u l a t e d i n E - P r i m e a s

Dr . B o u r l a n d w o u l d h a v e u s d o . Y o u c a n ' t s a y

t h a t t h e p h o t o n s a r e p a r t i c l e s ; y o u ' d s a y , u n d e r

c e r t a i n e x p e r i m e n t al c o n d i t i o n s p h o t o n s b e -

h a v e l i k e p a r t i c l e s . A n d y o u c a n ' t s a y p h o t o n s

a r e w a v e s . Y o u c a n o n l y s a y , u n d e r c e r t a i n

e x p e r im e n t a l c o n d i t i o n s p h o t o n s b e h a v e l i k e

w a v e s . N o w t h e r e i s n o c o n t r a d i c t i on , n o p a r a -

d o x , n o p r o b l e m , a n d n o n e e d t o s a y t h e u n i -

verse is irrational . I t i s j u s t t h e " i s o f i d e n t i t y "

w h i c h m a k e s t h e u n i v e r s e a p p e a r i r r a t i o n a l .


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Numbers 6 5-68, 20 01

I t h i n k t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f E - P r i m e c a m e

h o m e t o m e v e r y s t r o n g l y w h e n p e o p l e s t a r t e d

s h o o t i n g u p a b o r t i o n c l i n i c s - w e l l , u s u a l l y t h e y

w e r e a c t u a l l y w o m e n ' s c e n t e r s w h i c h d i d a l l

s o r t s o f w o m e n ' s m e d i c i n e b e s i d e s a b o r t i o n s ,

b u t t h e y d i d d o a b o r t i o n s , t o o , s o t h e y g o t t o b e

c a l l e d a b o r t i o n c l i n i c s . P e o p l e w o u l d g o i n a n d

s h o o t p e o p l e , s e t o f f b o m b s a n d w h a t n o t . This

w a s a l l o v e r t h e p h i l o s o p h i c a l d i s a g r e e m e n t : I s

t h e f e t u s a h u m a n b e i n g o r i s i t n o t ? W h i c h i s

l i k e , d o I l i v e i n L i v e O a k o r d o I l i v e i n

C a p i t o l a , o r d o I l i v e i n S a n t a C r u z ? I n E -

P r i m e y o u c a n ' t e v e n a s k t h e q u e s t i o n . I n E -

P r i m e , t h e c l o s e s t y o u c a n c o m e i s , " U n d e r

y o u r p r e s e n t p h i l o s o p h i c a l a n d s c i e n t i f i c

u n d e r s t a n d i n g , d o y o u c l a s s i f y t h e f e t u s a s

human?" ; o r , " U n d e r y o u r p r e s e n t p h i l o s o p h i -

c a l a n d s c i e n t i f i c u n d e r s t an d i n g , d o y o u c l a s s i-

f y t h e f e t u s a s n o t h u m a n ? " W e l l , t h e a n s w e r s

t o t h o s e q u e s t i o n s a r e , " U n d e r m y p r e s e n t

p h i l o so p h i c a l a n d s c i e n t i f i c u n d e r s t a n d i n g , I

c l a s s i f y t h e f e t u s a s h u m an , " a n d " U n d e r m y

p r e s e n t p h i l o so p h i c a l a n d s c i e n t i f i c u n d e r -

s t a n d i n g , I d o n o t c l a s s i f y t h e f e t u s a s h u m a n . "

I f p e o p l e w o u l d l e a r n t o t a l k i n E - P r i m e , t h e y

w o u l d b e m u c h l e s s p a s s i o n a t e , i t s e e m s t o m e ,

a n d t h e y ' d b e m u c h l e s s l i k e l y t o s h o o t g u n s a t

o n e a n o t h e r .

T h e r e a r e m a n y o t h e r e x a m p l e s , b u t I ' m

j u s t d o i n g a r o u g h r u n d o w n o n h o w K o r z y b s k i

c o n t i n u e s t o i n f l u e n c e m e . A l l t h e e v e n t s th a t

a r e g o i n g o n i n t h e w o r l d I t e n d t o s e e t h r o u g h

a K o r z y b s k i a n g r i d . H e m a d e a b i g g e r i m p r e s -

s i o n o n m e t h a n j u s t a b o u t a n y w r i t e r I h a v e

e v e r r e a d .

W h e n I w a s g o i n g t o h i g h s c h o o l , t h e c i v i c s

a n d E n g l i s h t e a c h e r s a n d a l l t h e h u m a n i t i e s

t e a c h e r s - I w a s i n a t e c h n i c a l h i g h s c h o o l , b u t

w e h a d t o t a k e s o m e h u m a n i t i e s c o u r s e s i n

t h o s e d a y s ; I d o n ' t k n o w i f t h e y h a v e t o t a k e

a n y c o u r s e s i n a n y t h i n g t h e s e d a y s ( m y g e n e r -

a l i m p r e s s i o n i s t h a t e v e r y b o d y w h o g r a d u a t e d

s i n c e 1 9 7 0 d o e s n ' t k n o w a n y t h i n g , b u t m a y b e

t h a t j u s t s h o w s I a m g e t t i n g o l d ) - a l l t h e

p h y s i c s , a l l t h e s o c i a l s c i e n c e a n d h u m a n i t i e s

i s

t e a c h e r s m a d e i t v e r y c l e a r t o u s t h a t H i t l e r

m a d e a t e r r i b l e m i s t a k e i n m a k i n g g e n e r a l i z a -

t i o n s a b o u t m i s c e l l a n e o u s g r o u p s o f h u m a n

b e i n gs . H e t o o k a l a r g e c o l l e c t i o n o f h u m a n

b e i n g s a n d h e s a i d t h e s e p e o p l e , t h e J e w s , h a v e

t h e f o l l o w i n g c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s , a l l o f t h e m .

T h a t ' s w h a t K o r z y b s k i m e a n t b y " a l l n e s s " a n d

t h a t w a s w h a t l a y b e h i n d t h e H o l o c a u s t . A n d

a n y b o d y w h o t h i n k s K o r z y b s k i ' s i d e a s a r e n o t

v e r y , v e r y i m p o r t a n t , j u s t r e m e m b e r w h a t t h e

Holocaust was, what happened . A n d i t a ll

r e s u l t ed f r o m ` J e w s a r e s u c h a n d s u c h ' . How

m a n y J e w s d i d H i t l e r m e e t i n h i s l i f e ? O n e h u n -

d r e d , t w o h u n d r e d , t h r e e h u n d r e d ? H o w m a n y

J e w s a r e t h e r e i n t h e w o r l d ? F i f t e e n m i l l i o n ,

t w e n t y m i l l i o n ? I d o n ' t k n o w . H e t h o u g h t h e

k n e w a l l a b o u t a l l t h e J e w s i n t h e w o r l d . H e

o n l y k n e w a f e w t h i n g s a b o u t a f e w o f t h e m ,

and probably the only ones he remembered

w e r e t h e o n e s w h o h a d h u r t h i s f e e l i n g s s o m e

t i m e o r a n o t h e r b y s a y i n g h i s p a i n t i n g s w e r e n ' t

v e r y g o o d . S o m e o n e s a i d , " A d o l p h , t h a t p ai n t -

i n g s u c k s " , a n d s i x m i l l i o n p e o p l e d i e d l a t e r o n

b e c a u s e o f a l l n e s s .

I d o n ' t w a n t t o b e t o o c o n t r o v e r s i a l , b u t I

w o u l d l i k e t o a s k , H o w m a n y m e n d o e s G l o r i a

Steinem know well enough to make all ness

s t a t e m e n t s a b o u t t h e m a l e s e x ? D o e s s h e k n o w

20 0, ; 30 0, 50 0? I s t h a t e n o u g h t o g e n e r a l i z e

a b o u t t w o - a n d - a - h a l f b i l l i o n m e n o n t h e p l a n -

e t n o w ?

T h e p a r a d o x e s o f q u a n t u m p h y s i c s , t o r e t u r n

t o t h e m , a l l r e s u l t f r o m c o n f u s i n g t h e m a p w i t h

t h e t e r r i t o r y. W e m a k e m a p s , a n d w e f i n d o u t

t h e d i f f e r e n t p a r t s i n q u a n t u m p h y s i c s m a y

n e e d d i f f e r e n t m a p s . W e f i n d t h e m a p s d o n ' t

e x a c t l y f i t t o g e t he r i n t o o n e p i c t u r e , s o w e f i n d

w e n e e d d i f f e r e n t p u r p o s e s , w h i c h s h o u l d n ' t b e

a s u r p r i s e . Y o u d o n ' t l o o k a t a w e a t h e r ma p t o

f i n d o u t p ol i t ic a l d i v i si o n s . Y o u d o n ' t l o o k a t a

p o l i t i c a l m a p t o f i n d o u t w e a t h e r d i v i s i o n s , a n d

s o o n . C o n f u s i n g t h e m a p w i t h t h e t e r r i t o r y ,

y o u b e g i n t o g e t t h e i m p r e s s i o n t h a t t h e w o r l d

is rather irrational . W e d o n ' t r e a l i ze t h a t w e

pu t the lines there . T h e r e i s s t i l l a l o t o f c o n f u -


4/12

14sion about this, even among professional physi-

c i s t s , ma n y of w h om I h a v e g o t t e n t o kn o w

intimately. When you get three physicistsarguing about the Copenhagen interpretation,

it is like three socialists arguing about what is

real socialism . It's enough to melt the Polar ice

caps . But this doesn't happen with Capitola,

Santa Cruz, and Live Oak because we know we

put the lines there . But generall y we forget we

put the lines there and we think the lines exist

outsid e of us . We think our belief system is an

exact reflection of an objective and unchang-

i n g w o r l d , w h i c h i s t h e h a l l u c i n a t i o n t h a t

Korzybski tried to cure . I have tried to popu-

larize this in my own way by the two mantras

"Don't belie ve totall y in anybody's B S (belief

syst em)," and the seco nd commandment is li ke

unto the first, "Don't believe totally in yourown BS." Because, after all, when y ou begin tobelieve in your own B S, you enter the state that

I call self-hypnotic, ideati onal trance, and pret-

ty soon you've got a headful of self-hypnotic

ideational trance, or s-h-i-t. People who go

around with their heads l ike that . . .

Peter Bogdanovich , like Jean Luc Goddard,

started out as film critic, and l ater became a .

film director, a nd a very good on e, I think . He

was persuad ed to become an actor i n a movie

t h a t O r s o n We l l e s ma d e t h a t h a s y e t t o be

released, called The Othe r Side of the Wind . Andt h e w a y O r s o n p e r s u a d e d Pe t e r B o g d a n o v i c h

to become an actor was when Bogdanovichsaid, "I'm not an actor, I don't know how to

a c t ." Welles said, "Everybody is an actor . "

How's that for an all ness and an isness s tate-

ment? Bogdanovich said, "What do y ou mean?"

And Welles said, "Every conversation is a per-

formance ." We draw the line, we s a y t h i s i s a c t -

ing and this is conversation, but every conver-

sation is a performance. Read Goffman'sPresentation of Self in Everyday Life . We arealways putting on a persona to deal with the

w o r l d a r o u n d u s . Everybody is an actor in a

certain sense . Or at least we can use the model

of acting to descr ibe a great deal of human

Genera l Semantic s Bulletin

behavior. So therefore don't be afraid if any-

body asks you to appear i n a movie .

I just came back from appearing in aGerman movie calle d Drei and Zwanzig, w h i c h

for those of you who lack Deutch means "twen-

ty-three" . And for those of you who don't

know why the movie is cal led twenty-three, you

haven't rea d enough of my books yet, obvious-

ly. Drei and Zwanzig is about a guy named Carl

Koch who read my novel I l l u m i n a t u s (which I

intended t o change the mind of everybody who

read it, to mutate them totally into new levels

of consciousness and awareness) . As it says

near t he end of the book, "This book is part of

the only real conspiracy it discusses" ; and it

changed Carl Koch's mind-certainly not quite

in the dir ection I wa s expecting-but the mes-

sage he got out of it is [that] the world needs

to be free of secrets, so "Let's burrow into all

the secret files of all the governments and pub-

lish what we find ." Once he got going on t h a t ,

he found out he was very good at it . He got int o

the U . S . Naval database in Norfolk ; then he got

into Lawrence Livermore Laborator y, wh ere,

as Buckminster Ful ler once s aid, "Most of the

best minds of the Americ an sc ient ific commu-

nity have de voted themselves, for 5 0 years, to

the singl e project of delivering more and more

explosive power over longer and longer dis-

tances in shorter and shorter time to kill more

and more people ." Now this is a remarkable use

of human intel lige nce . Apparently if the Cold

War hadn't ended they would have reached the

point where they could kill everybody in one

nanosecond, and then they woul d have achieved

the goal o f American financial policy in the las t

50 years .

He got into Lawren ce Livermore Laboratory ;

he got into everything, even to the FB I, the

CIA; he was all over the shop. And thenbecause he was more interested in coca ine than

in the kind of drugs I th ink are beneficial ,

which I shall not name, lest I get hauled off

and arrested (you might make a few guesses

after read ing s ome of my books)-Koch got an


5/12

Numbers 6 5-68, 20 01

even more wonderful idea, at l east it seemed

wonderful to him . His idea was, ins tead of just

distributing this i nformation for free, let's sel l

i t. So he contacted the KGB . Pretty soon he had

more cocaine than anybody in Germany. He

was rolling in cocaine . The more cocaine he

had, the more time he had to spend at the com-

puter, sni ffing and searching , sniffing and

searching-finding out more and more secrets,

s e l l i n g t h e m a t h i g h e r a n d h i g h e r p r i c e s -

sniffing and search ing, sniffing and searching .

T h e KG B kn e w mo r e abo u t w h a t w a s g o i n g o n

in Washington than the president did, proba-

bly-certainl y more than the Armenians knew .

Then Carl was found dead in the woods at the

age of 23 , on the 23rd of t h e mo n t h . He w a s

fascinated by 23s as a result of I l l u m i n a t u s .Apparentl y my books affect differen t peopl e in

different ways . Anyway, they wanted me toappear in the movie, playing myself I thought

it over, and I said yes . I figured like Orson

Welles said, every conversation is a perform-

ance. All I had to do was be myself I didn't

have to do a l ot of method acting and asking

what is this charact er really aiming for, what is

his true motive, and so on . I know pretty much

what my motive is, most of the time, or at least

part of the time .

You know, when somebody mentioned the

Roosevelt Hotel in o ne of the speeches, I was

wondering which Roosevelt Hotel was hethinking about . There must be . . . you knowthere is a Columbus in every state ; there may

be a Roosevelt Hotel i n every big city . When he

mentioned the Roosevelt Hotel my mind went

at once to the Roosevelt Hotel in Beverly Hills,

be c a u s e I h a v e t a u g h t t h e r e a t a c o u p l e of

neuro-linguistic programming workshops with

Richard Bandler and his staff. The Roosevel t

Hotel in Beverly Hills is a very interesting

place because lots and lots of people have seen

Clift o n Webb's g h o s t w a n d e r i n g a r o u n d t h e

h a l l s . I did no t get to see Clifton Webb's ghost .

Very few hotels have a n atmosphere like that,

where you think you might run into the ghost

15of an actor y ou remember from your chi l d-

hood . And the other thing about the Roosevelt

Hotel is that Charlie Manson worked in the

lobby a s a pimp about 20 years or 30 years ago .That gives another atmosphere . Charlie was up

for parole again recentl y, and was turned down

as usual, as I hope he always will be ; and he

gave an interview to the S a n J o s e Mercury . Thefirst intervie w i n years . One of the most inter-

esting things Charlie said was, "In my da y

being crazy meant something ; now, everybody

is crazy." So you see, when you say a simple

thing li ke Roosevelt Hotel, y ou don't know

what it is activating in the person listening to

y o u . It al so activates memories that the Roose-

velt Hotel double-bille d . T h e y ma d e t h e I n -

stitut e of Neuro-Linguistic Progr amming and

me both pay for the same room . That's enough

of the Roosevelt Hotel .

I have been very involved in neu ro-linguis-

tic programming for three y ears now . I r e a d a

few books on it before . One day I was call ed up

by the Insti tute, and they wanted me to teach

at one of their seminars . And I said I've read a

few books about it, but I don't know eno ugh

about it to teach . The person who does most of

their recruit ing said, "Dr. Bandler says you're

an expert on neuro-linguistic pro gramming ;

i t ' s i n a l l o f y o u r b o ok s . " S o I s a i d , h o w t h e h e l l

did I become an expert? I never thou ght I'd be

an expert on an ything . I can't even find my

dick with both hands with the lights out . Howcan I be an expert on anything?

When I met Dr. Bandler, he explained . I u s eNLP in all of my books . When I began tounderstand it a litt l e better, I cou ld see

Faulkner uses NLP in all of his books, too .

Every book on NLP that Band ler has written

that I have read, somewhere near the beginning

there is a chapte r call ed "The Map is Not the

Territory" . If it doesn't appear as a chapter

head, it appears in a box in the middle of a

chapter. That gives you an idea where the ori-

gins of NLP began . It is pa rtly Korzybski and

partly Milton Erickson's hypnotic work .


6/12

16Bandler has carried it into entirel y new dimen-

sions . I have seen Dr . Bandler put people into

deep trance in 3o seconds, which MiltonErickson was famous for. I think Bandler does

it even quicker and more efficiently . He is very

good with people who th ink they can't be hyp-

notized . He does this entire ly by means of his

understanding of language, how language con-

trols people . Wh e n y o u be g i n t o u n d e r s t a n d

NLP, you re alize tha t Korzybski did not st ate

the case nearly as strongly as it needs to be

stated . Korzybski said that thos e who control

symbols control us . You might just as wel l say

those who control symbols have the whole

wor ld h y pnotized . You better become a con-

troll er of symbols y ourself or you're going to

remain in a trance, a self-hypnotic i deational

trance that so mebody e lse lai d on you-some

guru or perfect master, or enlightened being or

teacher, or whatever . A perfect master (we've

got a l ot of them around California, around

where I live) is only ideal if you want to be a

perfect slave . The line between persuasion and

hypnosis, l ike the line between conversation

and acting, is not firm . We decide where we are

going to draw the line .

For instance, the Pentagon sent a couple of

officers to be trained in NLP, and they were the

ones who went to Congress every year toe x p l a i n w h y w e n e e d e d t o a p p r o p r i a t e mo r e

mo n e y f o r t h i s w o r t h w h i l e p r o j e c t [ t h a t ]

Americ a has devo ted so much of its time to

from 1945 to 1989-the p roject of delivering

mo r e a n d mo r e e x p l o s i v e p o w e r o v e r l o n g e r

and longer distances in shorter and shorter

time to blow up more and more peop l e . They

were trained in NLP so they could manipulate

the Congress better . The question is, were they

being more persuasive or were they hy pnotiz-

ing Congress? It depends on how you draw the

l i n e . A couple o f congressmen found ou t about

this and went and got trained in NLP .

One of them was Al Gore . I saw him at the

World Future Society in `89 . He was the head

of the Senate Committee on the Future then,

General Se tics Bulletin

and he said, "I promise not to run for president

again until I'm older." I thought, gee, that's a

safe statement, he'll be older one day from now .

He had a great debate on television with that

gu y whose na me I have trouble remembering .

When I grew up in Brooklyn it meant pussy or

female genit alia-Quayle . Quayle was running

w i t h a g u y n a m e d B u s h . I couldn't see any of

their commercials wit hout gigglin g because it

brought back my whole adolescence inB r o ok l y n . That's all we ever talked about in

h i g h s c h o o l -bu s h a n d qu a i l . Now we've got

Bush and Quay le runnin g for the top offices in

the land . I felt like I was living in a surrealist

painting. If you can get a tape of that debate,

p la y it and watch what Gore does to Qua yle .

Quayle is continually attacking Gore and the

Democratic Party in general as having social-

ist, left-wing tendencies, etc ., being dishonest,

crooked, co rrupt and wh atnot . Gore just comes

ahead with various points that are entirel y off

that subject on to things that have to be done .

An d h e a l w a y s e n d s w i t h , `An d w h a t d o y o u

plan t o do a bout these problems, Dan?" So Dan

Quayle is in the position that he can't go back

to his attack ; he's got to answer a question :

"What are you go ing to do about this ?"--he's

got to start thinking, which is something he is

not very good at, which is why Gore won that

d eba t e h a n d s d o w n . That's just a little simple

applic ation of NLP .

Another inte resting thing about the ` i s ' o f

i d e n t i t y I wanted to discuss tonight . I h a v e w r i t -

ten, as I said, my last t hree books in E-Prime,

which I find a very hel pful discipline . Once in

Mexico, I tried an exercise suggested by Aleis-

ter Crowley , the infamous satanist , black-magi-

cian, monster, sadist, etc ., a man I admire

tremendously because I don't think he was any

of those thin gs ; I think that was all create d by

his enemies . B e t h a t a s i t m a y , t h i s e x er c i s e c o n -

sists of banning the word "I" from your speech

for one week . He didn't want y ou to ban it for-

ever, like some of the more ardent proponents

of E-Prime want y ou to ban "is" forever . But he


7/12

Numbers 65-68, 2001wanted you to ban it for a week . So, I tried

going witho ut using the w ord "I" for a week .

Crowley suggested if you slip and use " I " , y o u

carry a razor around with y ou, and every time

you slip, cut y our arm slightly to give yourself

negative reinforcement so y ou don't slip and

say "I" again . I w a s n o t qu i t e a s c r a z y a s

Aleister Crowle y , but then ver y few peop le

could qualify for that ; so instead of cutting

myself with a ra zor, I bit my thumb. About t he

third day I had a very sore thumb. I was begin-

ning to enter a state of consciousness in which

"I" seemed l ike an obsessive/compulsive disor-

der. I thought I shoul d go to the OCD people

and say , "I've got this obsessive/compulsive

disorder, I relate everything to myself; I see

everything through a narrow perspective . How

can I get cure d of this terrible thin g?" By the

end of the week I was in a semi-Buddhist sta te,

and I was beginning to think, "What the hell is

wrong with the Western worl d that everybody

is so hung up on their ego?" A very interesting

exercise .

I am just pointing ou t that Korzy bski did

not discover all the traps in language . You can

find traps in language ; the more you l ook, the

more you find . Getting back to the `is' of iden-

tity, t he book I am working on now is cal led (I

keep wanting to say U n s a f e a t Any Speed ; i s n ' t

that o dd, th at's a book by Ral ph Nader)-my

book is call ed E v e r y t h i n g i s U n d e r C o n t r o l . It ' s i n

the form of an encyclopedi a of conspiracy the-

ories and heresies against consensus reality . I

discovered you can't write about conspiracy

theories without using the `is' of identity, or

degeneratin g into the kind of convoluted pros e

that you only find in Henry James . E v e nt h o u g h He n r y J ame s i s r e g a r d e d a s a ma j o r

American writer, I don't want to g et stuck

sounding like Henry J ames. If I'm goin g to get

stuck sounding like any convolute d writer, I'd

rather sound like Faulkner .

Conspiracy theory can't exist without the

` i s ' o f i d e n t i t y . You really need to use it (which

may te ll us something ver y important about

1.7conspiracy theory) . We are living in a decade-

well it began a couple of decades ago-it began

w i t h Wa t e r g a t e ; it accelerated in the '80s, it

keeps reaching ne w peaks every year through-

out the '90s . Every time I think it has peaked, it

doubles in intensity . More and more people

have more and more theories about other peo-

ple being up to no good . The general opinion

humanity has of other human beings has s unk

to an all-time low. Every body susp ects e very

other group of being up to something nasty .

When you ask what caused this sociologi-

cal phenomenon of this general ized distrust

that people have of one another and especially

of organi zations . . . People fear unions, people

fear government, people fear corporations, peo-

ple fear churches, people fear one another, peo-

ple fear all sorts of things . One of the reasons ,

I think, consists of the simple fact that there

are an awful lot of conspiracies going on . The

government lies to us all the time . They g et

caught constan tly Th e chief qualification to be

a politic ian in modern America is that you have

an absolutely shameless personality, which I

believe is known in technical psychiat ric litera-

ture as the "sociopathic personality" . Nothing

can shame you, you can get caught in ten lies in

ten days, and the eleventh day you've got a new

lie and great hope that people will believe you .

Remember Nixon's l ast d ays in office? He was

still telling new lies every day hoping that

there was still somebody out there whobelieved him. Nobody believed him any more,

but he had faith . He had conned so many peo-

ple for so long that he was convinced he could

go on, he c ould con them one more time . Even

when he resigned, he said, I am not guilty of

anyth ing, I'm just resigning for the sake of

form. He was resigning so they couldn'timpeach him, or it s ure l ooks that way from my

perspective .

We h a d I r a n Co n t r a . In Italy they had the

P2 conspiracy, whi ch got a lot of publicity in

the European press . I was living in Europe at

that t ime . As a matter of fact, I was l iving in


8/12

18Ireland, and in Ireland, as all the Catholic

priests will tel l you, the newspapers are run by

a bunch of damned athe ists . Well, they are all

atheists who are educated by the Jesuits . There

is nobody more subtle than an atheist educ ated

by Jesuits. Like when the archbishop sent out

his letter on God's plan for the family . On e of

them wrote to the I r i s h T i m e s , " W o u l d the arch-

bi s h o p ki n d l y e x p l a i n w i t h w h a t d e g r e e of

metaphor a timeless being can be said to have

plans?" Only an atheist educated by Jesuits

could come up with a question like that .

P2 got a lot of publicity in Irela nd and

throughout Europe . It didn't get quite as much

publicity here . Basically, leaving out all the

specu lation, there was a lot of specu lation

about P2 like Ethere is] about all conspiratori-

al activity. What was proven comes down toover 950 members of P2, which w as a secr et

society within a secret society . Licio Gelli, who

seems to have been the organizer, only recruit-

ed from third d egree Fre emasons, from the

G r a n d O r i e n t L o d g e of E g y p t i a n Fr e ema s o n -

ry Nine hundred of them had high posi tions in

the g overn ment . The y were accused of plot-

ting a fascist coup . There were also a couple of

them convicted o f massive financ ial fraud . I t

was discovered that Gelli, in coll aboration with

Roberto Calvi of Ban co Ambrosiano an d Mich-

ele Sindona of the Franklin Nationa l Bank-

a n d a g u y n ame d He r n a n d e z Ca r t a y a , of t h e

World Finance Corporation i n Miami-had set

up 200 banks that di dn't . even exist except in

their c omputers . And these 20 0 banks that d id

not exist made a ver y happ y merry-go-round

in which all the cocaine money was being laun-

d e r e d a n d e n d i n g u p G o d kn o w s w h e r e . Prob-

ably in numbered Swiss bank accounts .

Calvi, when he was indicted, fled to London

and was found hanging from a bridge with his

pockets full of bricks where the rising tide had

covered his dead body, which is the thrust of

the punishment given to Freemasons who be-

tray their fellows in the craft-which indicates

definitely tha t Calvi was killed by Freemasons

Genera l Se B u l l e t i n

or by people who ardently wish us to think he

was k i l l e d . by Fr e ema s o n s .Michele Sindona was convicted in New York

of 65 counts of stock and currency fraud ; t h e n

was extrad ited to Rome after Richard Nixon's

law firm put up a hell o f a three-yea r fight to

keep him from being extradited ; and was con-

victed of murdering a bank examiner, and t hen

was poisoned in his cell while waiting trial on

charges of plotting a fascist coup and complic-

ity in the Bologna 1980 rail way bombing . You

can see they were a busy and jolly bunch .

All the money from the coca ine in South

America was going through that bank and dis-

appearing into the 200 ghost banks that t hey

had set up .

This case never dies ; there are more investi-

gations all the time . Just recent ly a mafioso in

Palermo confessed to being the o ne who had

murdered Calvi, strang l ed him and hung him

from that bridge-which was the first theo ry

put forth by the first book I read about the

Calvi case-and it got supers eded by all the

people trying to prove Calvi was killed by the

Freemasons, by the Vatican, by this group o r

that group . Frankly, he was killed by the Mafia

f o r shorting them on a dope deal, or at l east

this mafioso confessed to tha t . A l l t h e i n v e s t i -

gating magistrates in Italy who were in volved

in the P2 conspiracy told the reporters that

Gelli was not the head , though Gelli seemed to

be the head . They had evidence that control

came from somewhere e l se . One of them said,

"I think it was another Freemasonic lodge in

Mo n t e Ca r l o " ; another one said he thought it

was the Grand Lodge Alpino in Switzerland .

Researchin g my book on conspira c y theo-

ries, I found an article that claimed that the real

brains behind P2 wa s James Jesus Angleton,

who was the head of counterintelli gence for

the CIA in 1954 to 1974, when h e got th rown

out for doing things in the United States that

the CIA is only allowed t o do in other coun-

t r i e s . Angleton is call ed paranoid by so many

writers that it is hard to separate the concept


9/12

e r s 6 5 - 6 8 , 2 0 0 1

Angelton and paranoi a . The two are intimately

related. He belie ved there w as a Soviet mole

high in th e CIA and he had his own d epartment

and his own budget, and nobody knew what he

w a s d o i n g b e c a u s e h e s h r e d d e d a l l o f h i s

papers eve ry nigh t before he left . This started

back in the '50s before anybody else inWashington was into paper shredding . He did-

n't want to leave a paper trail of anything .

Nobody knew what the hell Angleton wasdoing, except Dulle s maybe, and Dulles's s uc-

cessors, and the y probably d idn't know either

because Angleton was a ver y private person

and a very strange bird indeed .A . J. Weberman-who has the biggest Webs i t e y o u c a n f i n d , i t i s t h r e e p a r t s , t h e h i s t o r y o f

the CIA, the Kennedy assassination, and gar-

bolog y ; garbology i s what Weberman discov-

ered going through peop le 's garbage, which

was his first occupation before he started in o n

t h e C I A a n d t h e K e n n e d y a s s a s s i n a t i o n - h e

believes that he can prove that Angleton was

the brains behind the Kennedy assassinatio n .

Be that true or not, e verybody can judge for

themselves after reading this extensi ve site (if

you've got a yea r to take off, and go through all

of the file, y ou might come to an educated

opinion about that) . My thought, as I plowed

throug h this stuff, is that if Angle ton was

behind it, it was because he finally decided tha t

Kennedy was the Soviet mole he had been look-

ing for all those years .

You see, once the government stops trusting

the people, there is no end to it . As Maile r

points out in his novel H a r l o t ' s G h o s t , every

branch o f the CIA is igno rant of what every

other branch is doing. T h i s i s n e c e s s a r ybecause Angleton was very influential in set-

ting up the structure . He set it up so that a

mole in one department might find out a l ot

about that de partment if he or she go t into it

and got high enough, but they couldn't find out

what was going on in any other department . S o

nobody in a n y de partment of the CIA knows

what anybody in any other department is

19doing . So nobody can learn too much by pene -

trating there . You need l ots and l ots of moles

and getting even one mole in a high position is

pretty hard . B u t t h e r e s u l t o f t h a t i s t h a t e v e r y -

body in the CIA suspects every body else in the

CIA of all the things tha t left-wing paranoids

suspect th em of

In Mailer's novel, when they hea r about the

Kennedy assassinat ion at Langley, he describes

a scene where no body can l ook at anybody el se

because they 're all thinking the same thought :

"Was it one of those de partments I'm not sup-

posed to know about?" Which is what a l ot of

other people thought later. Once you 've defined

an enemy that is trying to subvert you, then

you need to sp y on everybody more and more .The more you spy on everybody, the morenervous ever ybody gets . So as a government

proceeds down the path of spying on the citi-

zens (re member the government at o ne time

was supposed to be our servant? We have com-

pletel y forgotten about that-we got so used to

thinking about them as our master), but the

more they spy on the citizens, the more you get

the citizens feeling anxious, nervous, paranoid,

a n d a l i t t l e b i t h o s t i l e . That's why you see those

bumper stickers that sa y, is your chur ch BATF

approved? in memory of Waco . The govern-ment is spy ing on al l of us all the time . K a f k a ,

who tried to write the cra ziest satire imagina-

ble about the excesses that a bureaucracy coul d

go, never thought of urine testing . Kafka cou ld

not imagine a country where the citizens were

obliged to pee into bottles and gi ve them to

government agents to take it back and find out

what was going on inside their bladder . As Bob

says-you al l heard of Bob, J. R . Bo b Dobbs,

short-term interim savior of the Church of the

S ubg e n i u s - if t h e y c a n l o ok a t y o u r p e e i n

your bladder, what the hell still belongs to you?

Once peopl e get more and more used to the

idea of the government spying on them, every-

body is more and more nervous about the gov-

ernment. They start forming committees a ndgroups to fight back. So y ou get more and more


10/12


11/12

Numb s 65-68, 2001to find out what is rea lly going on . Whi le

everybody around them has good motives to lie

to them . Meanwhile, everybody not in the rul-

ing class has a burden of 'niscience', which

means that ever ything that the y see, hear,

smell, taste, or otherw ise find out they can't

d a r e t a l k a b o u t i f i t c o n t r a d i c t s o f f i c i a l p o l i c y .

So more and more we dri ft to the conditi on

of "rigid icus bureau crat is" or maximum snafu,

in which no one knows what is going o n, or if

t h e y d o , t h e y a r e c a r e f u l n o t t o t a l k a b o u t i t . In

s u c h a s i t u a t i o n i t i s i n e v i t a b l e t h a t a l l s o r t s o f

conspiracy theories should prol iferate and a

large percentage of the American population

shou ld believe that Eisenhower made a dea l

with the e xtra-terrestrials in 1957 : Give us

your technology and you can have all the

c o w s l i p s y o u w a n t . This is no more fantast ic

than the situation we are actually in, in which

everybody is lyi ng to the government and the

government is too du mb to know it, although

they suspect it , so they spy on us more and

more to see if they can c atch us in any of our

l i e s .

So conspiracy theories will al ways continue

to proliferate, until the funding runs out and

they can't supply us with any more, or until the

power gets desovereignized, as Bucky Fuller

used to say, into the Internet and we don't have

governments any more.

The other great cause of the popularity of

conspirac y theories has to do wi th information

and chaos, two su bjects which have fascinated

me for a l ong t ime . I g o t i n t e r e s te d i n i n f o r m a -

tion theory t he same year I read Science and

Sanity. I read Claude Shannon's The Math-

ematical Th eory o f Communicat ion . I g o t f a s c i -

nated by the fact that i nformation incre ases

exponentially or logarithmically . A French sta-

tistical economist named George Anderla did a

study i n 1975 in which h e tried to es timate the

way in which information had increased from

the birth of Christ . Why he picked that time to

start, I don't know. I would have started a few

thousand years earlier than that, but I think he

21has a Western chauvinist viewpoint and could

use a course in multi-culturalism . But, mean-

w h i l e , b e t h a t a s i t m a y , a n d i t p r o b a b l y i s n ' t , i f

you take about all th e information that you

might have possessed in th e year 1 AD and ask

how long it took to double it, it took 1,500

years, until Leonardo da Vinci was in his for-

t i e s . T h e n e x t d o ub li n g t o ok 2 5 0 y e a r s a n d

happened by 1750 . The next do ubling took 150

y e a r s a n d h a p p e n e d b y 1900 w h e n t h e fi r s t

papers on quantu m mechanics appeare d, a few

years l ater the Wright brothers got it o ff the

ground . The next doubling took only 50 years

and by 1950 we had double t he information we

had in 1900 . Which means that my parents, and

the parents of all of you around my age, were

the first generation in human history to l ive

through a doubling of knowledge . All the

other doublings, nobody lived long enough to

experience them . Now information i s doubling

f a s t e r a n d f a s t e r . J a c q u e s V a l l e e c a l c u l a t e d a f e w

years ago tha t it is doubling every 18 months.

Meanwhile, Theodor e Gordon, an expert on

fractal mathematics, the mathematics of chaot-

ic systems, has published a theorem, a paper

showin g that as information flow incr eases,

fractal unpredictability increases, too . So as

information flow inc reases, t he worl d becomes

more and more unpredictable . People without

any training in or wil lingness to try to absorb

the mathematical, sc ientific viewpoints can't

see what is going on, they can't see how the

information flow is cha nging everyth ing

because it is creating more and more unpre-

d i c t a b i l i t y .

After in formatio n doubled t he first time

after Christ in 1500, in one breeding genera-

tion-seventeen years is a breeding generation

throughout most of human histor y-seventeen

years later, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses

on the door of the church . That was the first

successful Protestant revolution . Seventeen

years later Henry VIII started the second suc-

cessful Protestant revoluti on . For the next 200

years Europe was torn apart by religious wars


12/12

22until Jon athan Swift was moved to say we have

enough Christianity to hate one another, when

will we have enough Christianity to love one

another? An interesting question .

After the doubling in 1 7 5 0 we got the steam

engine, the Indust rial Revolution, the Ameri-

can Revolution, the French Revolution, the

United Irish Uprising, the Bol ivar Revolution

in South America, and the first MexicanRevolution .

In the last ten years, g o back to 1987 in your

imagination, to see how unpredictable the world

is becoming . Nelson Mande la was in jai l ; i t

looked to most observers l ike the white minor-

ity in South Africa wou l d never re linquish

power. There wou ld be bloodshed and blood-shed and bloodshed until they were practically

wiped out because the blacks were not going to

accept a subordinate position an ymore, and

that looked like a pretty hop eless and disgust-

ing situation . Ten years later they are sharing

power, and Nelson Mandela is the president of

the country. I n 1 9 8 7 it looked like the Reagan

and Bush policies were going to lead to nuclear

war and there was no way out . Ten years later

the Soviet Union has dissol ved and our gov-

ernment is on a desperate hunt to find new ene-

mies to justify spendin g more and more money

on the major research pro ject : delivering more

a n d m o r e e x p l o s i v e p o w e r o v e r l o n g e r a n d

longer distances in shorter and shorter time to

kill more and more peopl e . There is no Soviet

Union ; the enemy is gone .In 1987 the Israeli s were still saying, we will

not negotiate with terrorists . Yo u kn o w w h a t

terrorist means? It is a media word to keep you

from thinking . Terrorists are poor people who

are fighting . Rich people don't fight, they hire

governments to get armies to fight for them .

Poor people have to go out and do their own

fighting, so they are call ed terrorists . Wh e n a

government says we don't negotiate with ter-

rorists, they are saying we don't negotiate with

poor people .

We l l , w h a t fi n a l l y h a p p e n e d i s t h a t t h e

General Semantics Bulleti n .

Israelis decided they had to negotiate with

Yasser Arafat and now there is a Palesti nian

s t a t e . When that happ ened I said , by God, next

Tuesda y after lunch the B ritish government

will be negotiating with the IRA . W e l l , i t d i d

not happen that Tue sday after lunch, but it is

h a p p e n i n g r i g h t n o w . T he y a r e n e g o t ia t i n g .

For years and years the B ritish were saying we

won't negotiate with terrorist s, meaning we

won't negotiate with poor people . The y have

to ; otherwise the violence will never end .

Ten years ago only sci entists in universities

were onli ne and the World Wide Web was just

dawning. T h e r a t e a t w h i c h i t i s g r o w i n gchanges every ti me I read an articl e about the

rate at which it is growing . It was doubling

every eight months a year or so ago . Recently I

read it is doubling every four months . I t i s

spreading over the who le wor ld . All of this

happened in ten years . These are onl y a few of

the aspects of the tremendous changes we are

g o i n g t h r o u g h . Pe op l e h a v e be e n l i v i n g i n

space in the Mir colony for a long time .Sh a n n o n L u c i d : When she was a girl she told

her teacher she want ed to be a rocket scientist .

He said there never wil l be a profession of

rocket scientist, and if` there is they won't

all ow women in it . She has lived in space for

1 8 0 days on the Mir colony .

The world is chan ging faster and faster in

more and more ways, and people cann ot under-

stand that t his is the result of information flow

changing technology , which changes business,

which changes ever ything e lse. The y have to

look around for something to explain it, so th ey

look for a conspiracy to blame . Aha, it is the

elders of Zion after all, no, it's th e Freemasons,

no, it's the Jesuits, no, it's the Bilder bergers .

That's because they haven't learned to think in

terms of mathematics and information flow

and chaotic sy stems .

I think I'll l eave you with my latest Zen

koan : Keep the lasagne flying over Roswell and

the ravioli o ver Area 51 .

Korzibski (Robert Anton Wilson)

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