#29 – Robert Anton Wilson: Preparing for the 21st Century (1988)

07/26/23 • 132 min

Robert Anton Wilson (January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) wrote 35 books and over 1,500 published articles. He coauthored, with Robert Shea, the underground classic The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which won the 1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. His writings include Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, called “the most scientific of all science fiction novels,” by New Scientist, and nonfiction works of Futurist psychology and guerrilla ontology, such as The Cosmic Trigger Trilogy, Prometheus Rising, Quantum Psychology and The New Inquisition.

Bob worked as an associate editor at Playboy magazine from 1966 to 1971. In 1975, with his wife Arlen, he founded the Institute for the Study of the Human Future. In 1976, he created the Starflight Network to help implement Timothy Leary’s SMI2LE philosophy (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension), and promote The Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness (see Prometheus Rising). Bob regularly gave seminars at Esalen and other New Age centers, and lectures across North America and Europe. He made both a comedy record (Secrets of Power) and a punk rock record (The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy), and his play Wilhelm Reich in Hell was performed at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. His novel Illuminatus! was adapted as a 10-hour science fiction rock epic and performed under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Great Britain’s National Theatre, where Bob appeared briefly on stage in a special cameo role. In 2006, as the unofficial write-in candidate for the Guns and Dope Party, Bob ran in the election for Governor of California.

Maybe Bob was a futurist, author, lecturer, stand-up comic, guerrilla ontologist, psychedelic magician, outer head of the Illuminati, quantum psychologist, Taoist sage, Discordian Pope, Struthian politician . . . maybe. Bob said Model Agnosticism consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Bob’s Maybe Logic inspired the creation of the Maybe Logic Academy. Once when asked if he saw himself as a philosopher, he replied, “I am more of a speculator.”

Robert Anton Wilson married the freelance writer Arlen Riley in 1958; they had four children, Christina, Graham, Alexandra, and Patricia known as Luna.

Robert Anton Wilson

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Robert Anton Wilson married the freelance writer Arlen Riley in 1958; they had four children, Christina, Graham, Alexandra, and Patricia known as Luna.

Robert Anton Wilson

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#28 – A.S. Neill: Summerhill Founder Shares His Wisdom

Alexander Sutherland Neill (17 October 1883 – 23 September 1973) was a Scottish educator and author known for his school, Summerhill, and its philosophy of freedom from adult coercion and community self-governance. Raised in Scotland, Neill taught at several schools before attending the University of Edinburgh in 1908–1912. He took two jobs in journalism before World War I, and taught at Gretna Green Village School in the second year of the war, writing his first book, A Dominie's Log (1915), as a diary of his life there as head teacher. He joined a Dresden school in 1921 and founded Summerhill on returning to England in 1924. Summerhill gained renown in the 1930s and then in the 1960s–1970s, due to progressive and counter-culture interest. Neill wrote 20 books. His top seller was the 1960 Summerhill, read widely in the free school movement from the 1960s.⁠

A.S. Neill

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#30 – Freeman Dyson: Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society

Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was a British-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and engineering. He was professor emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a member of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Dyson originated several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson's transform, a fundamental technique in additive number theory, which he developed as part of his proof of Mann's theorem; the Dyson tree, a hypothetical genetically engineered plant capable of growing in a comet; the Dyson series, a perturbative series where each term is represented by Feynman diagrams; the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a space-faring civilization would meet its energy requirements with a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output; and Dyson's eternal intelligence, a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe could escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy.

Dyson disagreed with the scientific consensus on climate change. He believed that some of the effects of increased CO2 levels are favourable and not taken into account by climate scientists, such as increased agricultural yield, and further that the positive benefits of CO2 likely outweigh the negative effects. He was skeptical about the simulation models used to predict climate change, arguing that political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority.

Freeman Dyson

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