Letter to Green Egg
Yule 1975

Dear Green Eggers,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

There are altogether too may yentas around these days. This is a lovely planet, full of beautiful organisms at various stages of evolution, and we should all enjoy it more and spend less time bitching and kvetching. Every minute wasted on blaming and complaining is a minute lost from the love and joy that exists in infinite supply for those who know how to tap the Source.

(Unfortunately, it is impossible to find the Source until one STOPS bitching and complaining. This is because a small self-pitying mind has no room in it for Love to grow.)

As the Z Budapest controversy continues, it becomes more and more obvious that people are seldom arguing about the legal or civil-liberties issues but only about what they personally think of lesbians and/or militant feminists. It all reminds me of a great James T. Farrell short story called “Digging Our Own Graves,” which describes a group American radicals on the grave-digging detail in some concentration camp in an unspecified future. All through the story they argue–Stalinism vs. Trotskyism, Deleonism vs. Marxism, anarchism vs. communism, pacificism vs. revolution, etc. etc. etc., until the graves are finally finished. Then they are shot by the guards and dumped in. This may be more a parable than a short story.

Alan Watts once told me that the strongest of all yogas is to laugh for a half-hour every morning, before having breakfast or doing anything else. I though this was one of Alan’s put-ons, but I recently discovered that there is a school of yogis in India who do this every day. It’s called lila yoga. It might be a good idea for some of the bitter theologians who write to the GE Forum every issue. It might even add some real pagan joy to what increasingly sounds like the Papists and Lutherans squaring off for another Thirty Years War.

Gavin Arthur has a really brilliant book called The Circle of Sex, in which he suggest that there are 12 sexes, corresponding to the 12 signs of the Zodiac. What is Einsteinian and hip about Arthur is that he doesn’t suggest that one of them is “right” and the other eleven are “wrong.” One day about four years ago, it suddenly occurred to me that the stupidity or mental laziness which I had been attacking in my satirical writings for 20 years probably had some evolutionary function or it wouldn’t have lasted so long. I immediately enjoyed a good laugh at my own over-seriousness and became instantaneously more tolerant (well, a little more) about the mental incompetence of the human race. The same is probably even more true about the 12 standard sex-roles: if they didn’t have a survival function for the species as a whole, they wouldn’t have lasted through all the ups-and-downs of biosocial evolution.

If this Einsteinian attitude relieves me of the neurological reflex to be “offended” by Z’s lesbianism, it thereby frees me to put energy into activities more amusing than being offended is. And it also frees me from any necessity to be defensive about my own rather monolithic heterosexuality. If Lily Sabina Fairweather feels that the very existence of heterosexual males (or heterosexual females) is “tyrannical” (which is what I seem to decipher from hir latest incoherent rambling), then I merely suggest that Space Migration is coming fast, and it will only take 12 planets for each sexual group to have its very own world to romp in and thereby avoid being annoyed by the existence of the other eleven groups. I am presently putting about 90% of my energy into making Space Migration possible, and it will only be one among thousands of rewards if this finally makes it possible for Lily to have a planet (or space-city) of people all exactly like hirself and cease being perpetually agonized by those of us not exactly like hir.

I have no opinion about whether or not Z is a “bigot” (as Herman Slater keeps charging). As far as civil liberties are concerned, this is totally irrelevant. Any study of the history of the first amendment will show that we owe most of the important Supreme Court decisions to persons who were not models of tolerance, enlightenment or liberalism themselves. For instance, the most important 20th Century cases are almost all due to Jehovah’s Witnesses fighting against Roman Catholic bigotry, and the most important 19th Century cases are due to Roman Catholics fighting against Protestant bigotry. I have read a lot of attacks on the judiciary (and have written some myself) but our judges have been as a group more philosophical than the average tenor of Forum letters, or we would not have any civil liberties left at all. If I ever have to go on trial, I would sooner take my chances with the average judge, who at least understands something about objectivity as a goal worth aiming for, than with the average Forum writer, who would be concerned only with whether my philosophical opinions, sexual preferences or other matters of life-style are compatible with their own (accidentally imprinted) prejudices.

As for Norman Kaeseberq’s quite commendable attempts to organize a rescue party for Dr. Timothy Leary, I am touted by Norman’s gallantry, and amused to notice again that people’s responses seem to be based on whether or not they like Dr. Leary’s ideas rather than on the GIGANTIC threat to every dissident scientist-philosopher-or-religious-leader implicit in the monstrous injustices heaped on this lonely heretic. However, Tim is doing fine, will probably be out soon, and is a tougher, braver, higher, funnier and more intelligent man than he ever was before. As for the charges against him spread throughout the media by certain left-wing Hidden Persuaders, Tim rebuts all that brilliantly and in detail in an interview which will be published in PLAYBOY early next year. As usual, the truth is more interesting and more amusing than the myths were.

Love is the law, love under will.
    Robert Anton Wilson
    2510 College
    Berkely, CA 94720

 

Letter to the Forum/editor
Green Egg, Vol. VIII, No. 75, Yule Ω-26 (Dec. 21, 1975)