Robert Anton Wilson - 1
Hope is created out of belief in yourself, which gradually extends to belief in others and belief that there's a sound, sane center to the universe, in spite of appearances. First of all, you've got to make a commitment to the future, a commitment to challenge, a commitment to risk, and be willing to pay the price of taking risks and going far out. And then you find that there are grounds for hope, because there are alot of other people who are bold, visionary, turned on, and taking risks too. Humanity does not consist only of domesticated drones doing their jobs in the hive. Evolution is made by mutants who have doubt, hope and charity -- these three, and the greatest of these is doubt.
excerpt from Cryonics and Future Perspectives
Earlier, we discussed the four basic systems that, in the majority of Terrans at this stage of evolution, make up the hardware and software out of which our multiple selves emerge. To review:
1. The Oral Bio-Survival System, largely determined by early infantile imprints, deals with seeking Safe Space and avoiding the Dangerous or Alien. If somebody points a gun at you, whatever self has predominance in this bio-survival system "takes over" the brain at once. Whether you run, or faint, or smash the assailant with a karate chop, you won't remember making the decision. "I just found myself doing it," you will say afterward, because the ancient reptilian circuits of this system move as instant reflexes.
2. The Anal Territorial System, largely determined by imprints at the toddler stage, deals with seizing territory and holding some defined status in the mammalian pack or human family and/or community. Even a low status, once imprinted, will automatically function thereafter and seem "normal". E.G., the persons with an imprinted Bottom Dog self in this system will feel very uncomfortable, insecure and angry if circumstances force them into a sudden Top Dog position... just as automatically as those with imprinted Top Dog selves will feel uncomfortable, insecure and angry if forced into a Bottom Dog position.
3. The Semantic Time-Binding System, imprinted when language and other symbolisms begin to "make sense" to the growing child, deals with speech, thought (internal speech) and making maps and models of the environment. Since information increases logarithmically, this system tends to produce new maps and models faster and faster as time passes. These new reality-tunnels unleash new technologies, which alter politics, economics and social psychology in unpredictable ways. While the first two systems maintain the constants of evolution, the semantic system unleashes fractal "chaos" -- the mathematical term for high unpredictability. A time-binding semantic organism, such as the human, departs from evolutionary norms and functions as a revolutionary agent... at least potentially. To prevent the accelerated change and Unknown Results of rapid information flow, most societies dim the time-binding function by setting heavy taboos on speech, writing and other communications. Once these taboos began to break down -- after the English and American Bills of Rights became widely copied -- information flow increased markedly and the world began quantum-jumping from one reality-tunnel to another with dizzying rapidity. This so alarms conservatives (neophobes) that undoing the Bill of Rights has always played a central role in any conservative program.
4. The Socio-Sexual System, imprinted at puberty, produces a characteristic Sex Role and the "self" capable of playing that Role consistently. "Morals" get conditioned on top of this imprint and produce the gradual "civilizing" process by which loyalty to the family can grow into loyalty to any member of the tribe, to higher loyalties to nation-states etc., and even, in recent times, to an emerging sense of loyalty to the human species and to the living Earth itself. As mentioned earlier, four later systems seem to appear frequently in minorities and may play a larger role in our future evolution. We will now describe these emerging Futurist systems.
(continued on page 2)