Many years ago, in the early days of Jordan Peterson emerging as a public figure, I wondered aloud on Twitter as to how it was that so many young men had fallen under the sway of his cornerstore psychobabble rather than the thinking of someone like Robert Anton Wilson. Instead of a new cohort of adults being indoctrinated in dumb ‘anti-woke’ outrage and toxic manosphere bullshit, we could have seen them instead being innoculated against belief, and learning lessons on how to see things from alternative points of view to our own.
So I was very happy to see this exact subject discussed in a recent trialogue between Douglas Rushkoff, Grant Morrison and Gabriel Kennedy. Kennedy has recently published a fantastic biography of Robert Anton Wilson (Chapel Perilous: The life and thought crimes of Robert Anton Wilson, available in paper and ebook formats from Amazon), and sat down with Morrison and Rushkoff to discuss the book itself, and numerous RAW-related topics – from navigating the current societal ‘Chapel Perilous’ that we find ourselves in, to the creation of magical hypersigils. And as mentioned, the difference between people learning from Jordan Peterson vs Robert Anton Wilson.
Here’s the full chat – it’s a fun and thought-provoking discussion:
And of course, I had a fun synchronicity while watching it, when Grant Morrison said something that I wanted to remember for later, so I quickly looked at the video timecode to mark down to come back to – and it was at the 23 minute mark…