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You know, I have found a new way to get high and stay spaced out for hours on end, and the government can't stop me... It's called senility.
Robert Anton Wilson
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote humorously suggests that old age brings a carefree mindset that allows one to escape reality.

In this quote, Robert Anton Wilson cleverly uses humor to express the idea that as people age, the effects of senility can offer an unintentional escape from the stresses of life. It implies that growing older can lead to a blissful ignorance, freeing individuals from societal pressures and expectations, which can be interpreted as a positive aspect of aging.

Themes

SenilityHumorAgingCarefreeMindset

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared during a retirement party to celebrate the joys of aging.

More from Robert Anton Wilson

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
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There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
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I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
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To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
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The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
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The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
Robert Anton WilsonRead

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