My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
Interpretation
In a world that feels oppressive and confining, the best response is to seek freedom and escape from constraints.
This quote by Robert Anton Wilson suggests that modern society can feel like a restrictive environment, akin to a maximum security prison. Rather than accepting this as a permanent state, it encourages individuals to take proactive steps towards liberation and personal autonomy, advocating for creativity and courage in breaking free from societal limitations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about personal development and breaking free from societal norms.
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
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.
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.
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.
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
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).
The penalty may be removed, the crime is eternal.
I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.
Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one Iβm waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name Iβll never know.
We know that no algorithm can solve global poverty; no pill can cure a chronic illness; no box of chocolates can mend a broken relationship; no educational DVD can transform a child into a baby Einstein; no drone strike can end a terrorist conflict. Sadly, there is no such thing as 'One Tip to a Flat Stomach.'
Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.
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