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).
If the opponent offers keen play I don't object; but in such cases I get less satisfaction, even if I win, than from a game conducted according to all the rules of strategy with its ruthless logic.
The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
Our original nature is...void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy - and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awakening yourself.
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king's power or, later, people's power.
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