By Robert Anton Wilson The Map Is Not the Territory: The Future Is

12 Pages·2006·1 MB·English

By Robert Anton Wilson
The Map Is Not the Territory: The Future Is Not the Past
Note: This address is printed without censorship, as it is
Bulletin policy to record these events as they happened. - ed.
At the Harvard Club of New York City, November 7, 1997
Well, first I did meet my wife through the saying, `Apparently our questionnaire wasn't
New York Society for General Seman- worded properly and 80% of the people would
tics, but her name is not Ann [as given in the rather be in Capitola, but we don't think they
introductory remarks]; it is Arlen. That is of understood the question so we'll send you
absolutely no importance to anybody here another questionnaire later." That was about
except to me----I'd like to get her name right. three years ago. We haven't gotten another
The only other person I know named Arlen is questionnaire. I think the post office doesn't
Arlen Spector, who is a man who invented the want to go to the trouble of changing all their
magic bullet theory, which explained the Ken- forms.
nedy assassination by the bullet turning 360°. But, whether I live in Santa Cruz or Capitola
Where do I live? That's a very interesting became even more confusing when something
question. According to the post office I live in was stolen out of our car. And since the post
Santa Cruz, California; that's Spanish for holy office says we are in Santa Cruz, I called the
cross. If Jesus had lived later, it would be holy Santa Cruz police. When they got our address
lethal injection, I assume. The post office claims they said you're not in Santa Cruz, you're in
I live there. Everybody around that area claims Capitola. So we called the Capitola police, and
they live in Capitola. Well, virtually everybody; when we gave them our address they said
as a matter of fact, if I walk a half block from you're not in Capitola, you're in Live Oak, call
my house I am definitely in Capitola because the sheriff. So we called the sheriff and he said,
there is a shopping center there, and all the yeah, you're in Live Oak. So now I know I live
stores in the shopping center advertise as being in Live Oak according to the sheriff, Santa
in Capitola. How come I'm in Santa Cruz? Cruz according to the post office, and in
Because the post office put me there. A couple Capitola according to the Santa Cruz police.
of years ago the post office sent out ballots say- This is not a trivial matter. It's actually
ing, "We are thinking of rezoning, how many quadrivial.
of you would rather be counted as part of Back in the seventies I was involved in the
Capitola?" And it seems almost everybody Physics Consciousness Research Group, which
voted that they wanted to be part of Capitola. included Jack Sarfati, who has the wildest Web
And apparently the post office decided that was site you can find on the World Wide Web; Nick
too much work, because they sent out a notice Herbert, who has written Quantum Reality,
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12 General Semantics Bulletin.
Faster than Light, and other interesting books according to another one I live in Capitola and
on quantum mechanics; Fritjof Capra, who wrote according to a third I live in Live Oak has
The Tao of Physics; Fred Wolf, who has written helped me immeasurably in understanding the
so many books on quantum mechanics that I problems of quantum mechanics that we used
can hardly begin to list them all (The Body to discuss in the Physics Consciousness Re-
Quantum and several others). I was the resident search Group back in the seventies. Of course,
science fiction writer. You see, my first book, what it all comes down to . . .
Illuminatus-not my first book, but the first I don't speak in E-Prime. I've been writing
book to get any attention (I had three books in E-Prime a lot lately; I've written two books
before that which nobody paid any attention in E-Prime, and most of my recent articles in
to-now they are all back in print again, but E-Prime. I haven't yet learned to speak E-
that is another story)-the first book that got a Prime, so if you hear an "is" now and then,
lot of attention, was published by Dell . And it none of us are perfect. There was another
was such a strange book even I admitted it was lapse; there was an "are" in there.
strange. It was something utterly unique. I was The map is not the territory. In quantum
very proud when Timothy Leary compared it physics, you set up one experimental appara-
to Ulysses, because that was actually what I had tus-build up a mathematical theory to fit the
in mind-something equally revolutionary in a results you get-and you have proven that
different way. Dell didn't know how to package light travels in waves. You set up another
it and promote it, so they called it science fic- experimental apparatus and another theoreti-
tion. So nobody bought it but science fiction cal system to account for what you get, and you
fans. It took about ten years before other peo- prove that light travels in particles. Back in the
ple began to discover it. twenties there was a big argument-well, actu-
Meanwhile, because the first one was called ally it goes back to the previous century, but it
science fiction, all my books landed in the sci- heated up in the 1920s-does light travel as
ence fiction section, including my nonfiction waves or as particles; is light waves or is it par-
which made me wonder, am I writing science ticles? And the answer seems to be that light is
fiction when I think I'm writing science fact? waves when it feels like being waves, and it's
Well, it's a matter of how you define what is a particles when it feels like being particles.
fact and what is fiction. After a while, when Light is waves and light is particles. That leads
more and more of my books didn't seem to a lot of physicists to promulgate the theory
belong in science fiction, I wrote a detective that the universe is irrational-which I think is
story, I wrote three historical novels, and I the worst identification, `is' of' identity, that has
wrote a lot of books on psychology and seman- come up so far in this discussion.
tics; so I suddenly found myself in the New Supposing you reformulated in E-Prime as
Age section, God knows why, and there I was Dr. Bourland would have us do. You can't say
next to Von Daniken, just because my name that the photons are particles; you'd say, under
begins with a "W", and I suffered from that certain experimental conditions photons be-
indignity for years. I just heard recently that have like particles. And you can't say photons
Barnes & Noble has moved me from New Age are waves. You can only say, under certain
to Philosophy. So I am now next to Wittgen- experimental conditions photons behave like
stein, which is where I'd much rather be than waves. Now there is no contradiction, no para-
next to Von Daniken . dox, no problem, and no need to say the uni-
The fact that according to one model or grid verse is irrational. It is just the "is of identity"
or reality tunnel I live in Santa Cruz and which makes the universe appear irrational.
is
Numbers 65-68, 2001
I think the importance of E-Prime came teachers made it very clear to us that Hitler
home to me very strongly when people started made a terrible mistake in making generaliza-
shooting up abortion clinics-well, usually they tions about miscellaneous groups of human
were actually women's centers which did all beings. He took a large collection of human
sorts of women's medicine besides abortions, beings and he said these people, the Jews, have
but they did do abortions, too, so they got to be the following characteristics, all of them.
called abortion clinics. People would go in and That's what Korzybski meant by "allness" and
shoot people, set off bombs and whatnot. This that was what lay behind the Holocaust. And
was all over the philosophical disagreement: Is anybody who thinks Korzybski's ideas are not
the fetus a human being or is it not? Which is very, very important, just remember what the
like, do I live in Live Oak or do I live in Holocaust was, what happened. And it all
Capitola, or do I live in Santa Cruz? In E- resulted from `Jews are such and such'. How
Prime you can't even ask the question. In E- many Jews did Hitler meet in his life? One hun-
Prime, the closest you can come is, "Under dred, two hundred, three hundred? How many
your present philosophical and scientific Jews are there in the world? Fifteen million,
understanding, do you classify the fetus as twenty million? I don't know. He thought he
human?"; or, "Under your present philosophi- knew all about all the Jews in the world. He
cal and scientific understanding, do you classi- only knew a few things about a few of them,
fy the fetus as not human?" Well, the answers and probably the only ones he remembered
to those questions are, "Under my present were the ones who had hurt his feelings some
philosophical and scientific understanding, I time or another by saying his paintings weren't
classify the fetus as human," and "Under my very good. Someone said, "Adolph, that paint-
present philosophical and scientific under- ing sucks", and six million people died later on
standing, I do not classify the fetus as human." because of allness.
If people would learn to talk in E-Prime, they I don't want to be too controversial, but I
would be much less passionate, it seems to me, would like to ask, How many men does Gloria
and they'd be much less likely to shoot guns at Steinem know well enough to make allness
one another. statements about the male sex? Does she know
There are many other examples, but I'm 200, ;300, 500? Is that enough to generalize
just doing a rough rundown on how Korzybski about two-and-a-half billion men on the plan-
continues to influence me. All the events that et now?
are going on in the world I tend to see through The paradoxes of quantum physics, to return
a Korzybskian grid. He made a bigger impres- to them, all result from confusing the map with
sion on me than just about any writer I have the territory. We make maps, and we find out
ever read. the different parts in quantum physics may
When I was going to high school, the civics need different maps. We find the maps don't
and English teachers and all the humanities exactly fit together into one picture, so we find
teachers-I was in a technical high school, but we need different purposes, which shouldn't be
we had to take some humanities courses in a surprise. You don't look at a weather map to
those days; I don't know if they have to take find out political divisions. You don't look at a
any courses in anything these days (my gener- political map to find out weather divisions, and
al impression is that everybody who graduated so on. Confusing the map with the territory,
since 1970 doesn't know anything, but maybe you begin to get the impression that the world
that just shows I am getting old)-all the is rather irrational. We don't realize that we
physics, all the social science and humanities put the lines there. There is still a lot of confu-
14 General Semantics Bulletin
sion about this, even among professional physi- behavior. So therefore don't be afraid if any-
cists, many of whom I have gotten to know body asks you to appear in a movie.
intimately. When you get three physicists I just came back from appearing in a
arguing about the Copenhagen interpretation, German movie called Drei and Zwanzig, which
it is like three socialists arguing about what is for those of you who lack Deutch means "twen-
real socialism. It's enough to melt the Polar ice ty-three". And for those of you who don't
caps. But this doesn't happen with Capitola, know why the movie is called twenty-three, you
Santa Cruz, and Live Oak because we know we haven't read enough of my books yet, obvious-
put the lines there. But generally we forget we ly. Drei and Zwanzig is about a guy named Carl
put the lines there and we think the lines exist Koch who read my novel Illuminatus (which I
outside of us. We think our belief system is an intended to change the mind of everybody who
exact reflection of an objective and unchang- read it, to mutate them totally into new levels
ing world, which is the hallucination that of consciousness and awareness). As it says
Korzybski tried to cure. I have tried to popu- near the end of the book, "This book is part of
larize this in my own way by the two mantras the only real conspiracy it discusses"; and it
"Don't believe totally in anybody's BS (belief changed Carl Koch's mind-certainly not quite
system)," and the second commandment is like in the direction I was expecting-but the mes-
unto the first, "Don't believe totally in your sage he got out of it is [that] the world needs
own BS." Because, after all, when you begin to to be free of secrets, so "Let's burrow into all
believe in your own BS, you enter the state that the secret files of all the governments and pub-
I call self-hypnotic, ideational trance, and pret- lish what we find." Once he got going on that,
ty soon you've got a headful of self-hypnotic he found out he was very good at it. He got into
ideational trance, or s-h-i-t. People who go the U.S. Naval database in Norfolk; then he got
around with their heads like that . . . into Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where,
Peter Bogdanovich, like Jean Luc Goddard, as Buckminster Fuller once said, "Most of the
started out as film critic, and later became a . best minds of the American scientific commu-
film director, and a very good one, I think . He nity have devoted themselves, for 50 years, to
was persuaded to become an actor in a movie the single project of delivering more and more
that Orson Welles made that has yet to be explosive power over longer and longer dis-
released, called The Other Side of the Wind. And tances in shorter and shorter time to kill more
the way Orson persuaded Peter Bogdanovich and more people." Now this is a remarkable use
to become an actor was when Bogdanovich of human intelligence. Apparently if the Cold
said, "I'm not an actor, I don't know how to War hadn't ended they would have reached the
act." Welles said, "Everybody is an actor." point where they could kill everybody in one
How's that for an allness and an isness state- nanosecond, and then they would have achieved
ment? Bogdanovich said, "What do you mean?" the goal of American financial policy in the last
And Welles said, "Every conversation is a per- 50 years.
formance." We draw the line, we say this is act- He got into Lawrence Livermore Laboratory;
ing and this is conversation, but every conver- he got into everything, even to the FBI, the
sation is a performance. Read Goffman's CIA; he was all over the shop. And then
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. We are because he was more interested in cocaine than
always putting on a persona to deal with the in the kind of drugs I think are beneficial,
world around us. Everybody is an actor in a which I shall not name, lest I get hauled off
certain sense. Or at least we can use the model and arrested (you might make a few guesses
of acting to describe a great deal of human after reading some of my books)-Koch got an
Numbers 65-68, 2001 15
even more wonderful idea, at least it seemed of an actor you remember from your child-
wonderful to him. His idea was, instead of just hood. And the other thing about the Roosevelt
distributing this information for free, let's sell Hotel is that Charlie Manson worked in the
it. So he contacted the KGB. Pretty soon he had lobby as a pimp about 20 years or 30 years ago.
more cocaine than anybody in Germany. He That gives another atmosphere. Charlie was up
was rolling in cocaine. The more cocaine he for parole again recently, and was turned down
had, the more time he had to spend at the com- as usual, as I hope he always will be; and he
puter, sniffing and searching, sniffing and gave an interview to the San JoseMercury. The
searching-finding out more and more secrets, first interview in years. One of the most inter-
selling them at higher and higher prices- esting things Charlie said was, "In my day
sniffing and searching, sniffing and searching . being crazy meant something; now, everybody
The KGB knew more about what was going on is crazy." So you see, when you say a simple
in Washington than the president did, proba- thing like Roosevelt Hotel, you don't know
bly-certainly more than the Armenians knew. what it is activating in the person listening to
Then Carl was found dead in the woods at the you. It also activates memories that the Roose-
age of 23, on the 23rd of the month. He was velt Hotel double-billed. They made the In-
fascinated by 23s as a result of Illuminatus. stitute of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and
Apparently my books affect different people in me both pay for the same room. That's enough
different ways. Anyway, they wanted me to of the Roosevelt Hotel.
appear in the movie, playing myself I thought I have been very involved in neuro-linguis-
it over, and I said yes. I figured like Orson tic programming for three years now. I read a
Welles said, every conversation is a perform- few books on it before. One day I was called up
ance. All I had to do was be myself I didn't by the Institute, and they wanted me to teach
have to do a lot of method acting and asking at one of their seminars. And I said I've read a
what is this character really aiming for, what is few books about it, but I don't know enough
his true motive, and so on. I know pretty much about it to teach. The person who does most of
what my motive is, most of the time, or at least their recruiting said, "Dr. Bandler says you're
part of the time. an expert on neuro-linguistic programming;
You know, when somebody mentioned the it's in all of your books." So I said, how the hell
Roosevelt Hotel in one of the speeches, I was did I become an expert? I never thought I'd be
wondering which Roosevelt Hotel was he an expert on anything. I can't even find my
thinking about. There must be . . . you know dick with both hands with the lights out. How
there is a Columbus in every state; there may can I be an expert on anything?
be a Roosevelt Hotel in every big city. When he When I met Dr. Bandler, he explained. I use
mentioned the Roosevelt Hotel my mind went NLP in all of my books. When I began to
at once to the Roosevelt Hotel in Beverly Hills, understand it a little better, I could see
because I have taught there at a couple of Faulkner uses NLP in all of his books, too .
neuro-linguistic programming workshops with Every book on NLP that Bandler has written
Richard Bandler and his staff. The Roosevelt that I have read, somewhere near the beginning
Hotel in Beverly Hills is a very interesting there is a chapter called "The Map is Not the
place because lots and lots of people have seen Territory". If it doesn't appear as a chapter
Clifton Webb's ghost wandering around the head, it appears in a box in the middle of a
halls. I did not get to see Clifton Webb's ghost. chapter. That gives you an idea where the ori-
Very few hotels have an atmosphere like that, gins of NLP began. It is partly Korzybski and
where you think you might run into the ghost partly Milton Erickson's hypnotic work.
16 General Se tics Bulletin.
Bandler has carried it into entirely new dimen- and he said, "I promise not to run for president
sions. I have seen Dr. Bandler put people into again until I'm older." I thought, gee, that's a
deep trance in 3o seconds, which Milton safe statement, he'll be older one day from now.
Erickson was famous for. I think Bandler does He had a great debate on television with that
it even quicker and more efficiently. He is very guy whose name I have trouble remembering.
good with people who think they can't be hyp- When I grew up in Brooklyn it meant pussy or
notized. He does this entirely by means of his female genitalia-Quayle. Quayle was running
understanding of language, how language con- with a guy named Bush. I couldn't see any of
trols people. When you begin to understand their commercials without giggling because it
NLP, you realize that Korzybski did not state brought back my whole adolescence in
the case nearly as strongly as it needs to be Brooklyn. That's all we ever talked about in
stated. Korzybski said that those who control high school-bush and quail. Now we've got
symbols control us. You might just as well say Bush and Quayle running for the top offices in
those who control symbols have the whole the land. I felt like I was living in a surrealist
world hypnotized. You better become a con- painting. If you can get a tape of that debate,
troller of symbols yourself or you're going to play it and watch what Gore does to Quayle.
remain in a trance, a self-hypnotic ideational Quayle is continually attacking Gore and the
trance that somebody else laid on you-some Democratic Party in general as having social-
guru or perfect master, or enlightened being or ist, left-wing tendencies, etc., being dishonest,
teacher, or whatever. A perfect master (we've crooked, corrupt and whatnot. Gore just comes
got a lot of them around California, around ahead with various points that are entirely off
where I live) is only ideal if you want to be a that subject on to things that have to be done.
perfect slave. The line between persuasion and And he always ends with, `And what do you
hypnosis, like the line between conversation plan to do about these problems, Dan?" So Dan
and acting, is not firm. We decide where we are Quayle is in the position that he can't go back
going to draw the line. to his attack; he's got to answer a question:
For instance, the Pentagon sent a couple of "What are you going to do about this?"--he's
officers to be trained in NLP, and they were the got to start thinking, which is something he is
ones who went to Congress every year to not very good at, which is why Gore won that
explain why we needed to appropriate more debate hands down. That's just a little simple
money for this worthwhile project [that] application of NLP.
America has devoted so much of its time to Another interesting thing about the `is' of
from 1945 to 1989-the project of delivering identity I wanted to discuss tonight. I have writ-
more and more explosive power over longer ten, as I said, my last three books in E-Prime,
and longer distances in shorter and shorter which I find a very helpful discipline . Once in
time to blow up more and more people. They Mexico, I tried an exercise suggested by Aleis-
were trained in NLP so they could manipulate ter Crowley, the infamous satanist, black-magi-
the Congress better. The question is, were they cian, monster, sadist, etc., a man I admire
being more persuasive or were they hypnotiz- tremendously because I don't think he was any
ing Congress? It depends on how you draw the of those things; I think that was all created by
line. A couple of congressmen found out about his enemies. Be that as it may, this exercise con-
this and went and got trained in NLP. sists of banning the word "I" from your speech
One of them was Al Gore. I saw him at the for one week. He didn't want you to ban it for-
World Future Society in `89. He was the head ever, like some of the more ardent proponents
of the Senate Committee on the Future then, of E-Prime want you to ban "is" forever. But he
Numbers 65-68, 2001 1.7
wanted you to ban it for a week. So, I tried conspiracy theory). We are living in a decade-
going without using the word "I" for a week. well it began a couple of decades ago-it began
Crowley suggested if you slip and use "I", you with Watergate; it accelerated in the '80s, it
carry a razor around with you, and every time keeps reaching new peaks every year through-
you slip, cut your arm slightly to give yourself out the '90s. Every time I think it has peaked, it
negative reinforcement so you don't slip and doubles in intensity. More and more people
say "I" again. I was not quite as crazy as have more and more theories about other peo-
Aleister Crowley, but then very few people ple being up to no good. The general opinion
could qualify for that; so instead of cutting humanity has of other human beings has sunk
myself with a razor, I bit my thumb. About the to an all-time low. Everybody suspects every
third day I had a very sore thumb. I was begin- other group of being up to something nasty.
ning to enter a state of consciousness in which When you ask what caused this sociologi-
"I" seemed like an obsessive/compulsive disor- cal phenomenon of this generalized distrust
der. I thought I should go to the OCD people that people have of one another and especially
and say, "I've got this obsessive/compulsive of organizations . . . People fear unions, people
disorder, I relate everything to myself; I see fear government, people fear corporations, peo-
everything through a narrow perspective. How ple fear churches, people fear one another, peo-
can I get cured of this terrible thing?" By the ple fear all sorts of things. One of the reasons,
end of the week I was in a semi-Buddhist state, I think, consists of the simple fact that there
and I was beginning to think, "What the hell is are an awful lot of conspiracies going on. The
wrong with the Western world that everybody government lies to us all the time. They get
is so hung up on their ego?" A very interesting caught constantly The chief qualification to be
exercise. a politician in modern America is that you have
I am just pointing out that Korzybski did an absolutely shameless personality, which I
not discover all the traps in language. You can believe is known in technical psychiatric litera-
find traps in language; the more you look, the ture as the "sociopathic personality". Nothing
more you find. Getting back to the `is' of iden- can shame you, you can get caught in ten lies in
tity, the book I am working on now is called (I ten days, and the eleventh day you've got a new
keep wanting to say Unsafe at Any Speed; isn't lie and great hope that people will believe you .
that odd, that's a book by Ralph Nader)-my Remember Nixon's last days in office? He was
book is called Everything is Under Control. It's in still telling new lies every day hoping that
the form of an encyclopedia of conspiracy the- there was still somebody out there who
ories and heresies against consensus reality. I believed him. Nobody believed him anymore,
discovered you can't write about conspiracy but he had faith. He had conned so many peo-
theories without using the `is' of identity, or ple for so long that he was convinced he could
degenerating into the kind of convoluted prose go on, he could con them one more time. Even
that you only find in Henry James. Even when he resigned, he said, I am not guilty of
though Henry James is regarded as a major anything, I'm just resigning for the sake of
American writer, I don't want to get stuck form. He was resigning so they couldn't
sounding like Henry James. If I'm going to get impeach him, or it sure looks that way from my
stuck sounding like any convoluted writer, I'd perspective.
rather sound like Faulkner. We had Iran Contra. In Italy they had the
Conspiracy theory can't exist without the P2 conspiracy, which got a lot of publicity in
`is' of identity. You really need to use it (which the European press. I was living in Europe at
may tell us something very important about that time. As a matter of fact, I was living in
18 General Se Bulletin
Ireland, and in Ireland, as all the Catholic or by people who ardently wish us to think he
priests will tell you, the newspapers are run by was killed .by Freemasons.
a bunch of damned atheists. Well, they are all Michele Sindona was convicted in New York
atheists who are educated by the Jesuits. There of 65 counts of stock and currency fraud; then
is nobody more subtle than an atheist educated was extradited to Rome after Richard Nixon's
by Jesuits. Like when the archbishop sent out law firm put up a hell of a three-year fight to
his letter on God's plan for the family. One of keep him from being extradited; and was con-
them wrote to the Irish Times, "Would the arch- victed of murdering a bank examiner, and then
bishop kindly explain with what degree of was poisoned in his cell while waiting trial on
metaphor a timeless being can be said to have charges of plotting a fascist coup and complic-
plans?" Only an atheist educated by Jesuits ity in the Bologna 1980 railway bombing. You
could come up with a question like that. can see they were a busy and jolly bunch.
P2 got a lot of publicity in Ireland and All the money from the cocaine in South
throughout Europe. It didn't get quite as much America was going through that bank and dis-
publicity here. Basically, leaving out all the appearing into the 200 ghost banks that they
speculation, there was a lot of speculation had set up.
about P2 like Ethere is] about all conspiratori- This case never dies; there are more investi-
al activity. What was proven comes down to gations all the time. Just recently a mafioso in
over 950 members of P2, which was a secret Palermo confessed to being the one who had
society within a secret society. Licio Gelli, who murdered Calvi, strangled him and hung him
seems to have been the organizer, only recruit- from that bridge-which was the first theory
ed from third degree Freemasons, from the put forth by the first book I read about the
Grand Orient Lodge of Egyptian Freemason- Calvi case-and it got superseded by all the
ry Nine hundred of them had high positions in people trying to prove Calvi was killed by the
the government. They were accused of plot- Freemasons, by the Vatican, by this group or
ting a fascist coup. There were also a couple of that group. Frankly, he was killed by the Mafia
them convicted of massive financial fraud. It for shorting them on a dope deal, or at least
was discovered that Gelli, in collaboration with this mafioso confessed to that. All the investi-
Roberto Calvi of Banco Ambrosiano and Mich- gating magistrates in Italy who were involved
ele Sindona of the Franklin National Bank- in the P2 conspiracy told the reporters that
and a guy named Hernandez Cartaya, of the Gelli was not the head, though Gelli seemed to
World Finance Corporation in Miami-had set be the head. They had evidence that control
up 200 banks that didn't. even exist except in came from somewhere else. One of them said,
their computers. And these 200 banks that did "I think it was another Freemasonic lodge in
not exist made a very happy merry-go-round Monte Carlo"; another one said he thought it
in which all the cocaine money was being laun- was the Grand Lodge Alpino in Switzerland.
dered and ending up God knows where. Prob- Researching my book on conspiracy theo-
ably in numbered Swiss bank accounts. ries, I found an article that claimed that the real
Calvi, when he was indicted, fled to London brains behind P2 was James Jesus Angleton,
and was found hanging from a bridge with his who was the head of counterintelligence for
pockets full of bricks where the rising tide had the CIA in 1954 to 1974, when he got thrown
covered his dead body, which is the thrust of out for doing things in the United States that
the punishment given to Freemasons who be- the CIA is only allowed to do in other coun-
tray their fellows in the craft-which indicates tries. Angleton is called paranoid by so many
definitely that Calvi was killed by Freemasons writers that it is hard to separate the concept
ers 65-68, 2001 19
Angelton and paranoia. The two are intimately doing. So nobody can learn too much by pene-
related. He believed there was a Soviet mole trating there. You need lots and lots of moles
high in the CIA and he had his own department and getting even one mole in a high position is
and his own budget, and nobody knew what he pretty hard. But the result of that is that every-
was doing because he shredded all of his body in the CIA suspects everybody else in the
papers every night before he left. This started CIA of all the things that left-wing paranoids
back in the '50s before anybody else in suspect them of.
Washington was into paper shredding. He did- In Mailer's novel, when they hear about the
n't want to leave a paper trail of anything. Kennedy assassination at Langley, he describes
Nobody knew what the hell Angleton was a scene where nobody can look at anybody else
doing, except Dulles maybe, and Dulles's suc- because they're all thinking the same thought:
cessors, and they probably didn't know either "Was it one of those departments I'm not sup-
because Angleton was a very private person posed to know about?" Which is what a lot of
and a very strange bird indeed. other people thought later. Once you've defined
A. J. Weberman-who has the biggest Web an enemy that is trying to subvert you, then
site you can find, it is three parts, the history of you need to spy on everybody more and more .
the CIA, the Kennedy assassination, and gar- The more you spy on everybody, the more
bology; garbology is what Weberman discov- nervous everybody gets. So as a government
ered going through people's garbage, which proceeds down the path of spying on the citi-
was his first occupation before he started in on zens (remember the government at one time
the CIA and the Kennedy assassination-he was supposed to be our servant? We have com-
believes that he can prove that Angleton was pletely forgotten about that-we got so used to
the brains behind the Kennedy assassination. thinking about them as our master), but the
Be that true or not, everybody can judge for more they spy on the citizens, the more you get
themselves after reading this extensive site (if the citizens feeling anxious, nervous, paranoid,
you've got a year to take off, and go through all and a little bit hostile. That's why you see those
of the file, you might come to an educated bumper stickers that say, is your church BATF
opinion about that). My thought, as I plowed approved? in memory of Waco. The govern-
through this stuff, is that if Angleton was ment is spying on all of us all the time. Kafka,
behind it, it was because he finally decided that who tried to write the craziest satire imagina-
Kennedy was the Soviet mole he had been look- ble about the excesses that a bureaucracy could
ing for all those years. go, never thought of urine testing. Kafka could
You see, once the government stops trusting not imagine a country where the citizens were
the people, there is no end to it. As Mailer obliged to pee into bottles and give them to
points out in his novel Harlot's Ghost, every government agents to take it back and find out
branch of the CIA is ignorant of what every what was going on inside their bladder. As Bob
other branch is doing. This is necessary says-you all heard of Bob, J. R. Bob Dobbs,
because Angleton was very influential in set- short-term interim savior of the Church of the
ting up the structure. He set it up so that a Subgenius-if they can look at your pee in
mole in one department might find out a lot your bladder, what the hell still belongs to you?
about that department if he or she got into it Once people get more and more used to the
and got high enough, but they couldn't find out idea of the government spying on them, every-
what was going on in any other department. So body is more and more nervous about the gov-
nobody in any department of the CIA knows ernment. They start forming committees and
what anybody in any other department is groups to fight back. So you get more and more
20 General Semantics Bulletin
contributions to the ACLU, you get the militias this group. How many of you are willing to
taking another way of opposing the govern- hold up your hand and say that every time you
ment, you've got the Republic of Texas trying have dealt with the government you have told
to secede, you've got FIJA, the Fully Informed them the whole truth, nothing but the truth,
Jury Association, which is trying to make sure and held nothing back? You see, we've got one.
that every citizen learns eventually that ever My God, you are the first one I have encoun-
since Magna Carta it has been repeatedly tered in about 20 years of asking that question.
upheld that juries have the right to judge the Here's a man who always tells the truth to the
law as well as the facts. If a judge tells you that government and is not in jail. Amazing.
even if you don't approve of the law, if you The plain fact is that almost everybody lies
think this guy did it you gotta find him guilty, to the government all the time because they are
the judge is lying, he is distorting the law. The afraid of what the government might do to
actual law upheld by the United States them. That's why people lie to their bosses.
Supreme Court in many decisions, upheld in They are afraid of getting fired if they tell too
England ever since Magna Carta, you have the much of the truth. If somebody has the power
right if you think the law is unjust not to to put you in jail, fire you, throw you out on the
uphold that law. They lie to you if they tell you street, put you in a gulag or anything like that,
anything else. So FIJA is trying to undo this you are going to say what they want to hear.
thing. So the result is that people in power hear
This means that as the government looks more and more what they want to hear and less
around, it sees hostility everywhere. There's and less of what is really going on in the non-
the ACLU, there's FIJA, there's the militias, verbal, extensional world out there. So the de-
there are all sorts of right-wing and left-wing lusions get more and more deeply set because
cranks. What is the answer? We have to spy on nobody ever contradicts them. If anybody does
the people even more, let's have mail covers, contradict them they get accused of being
let's have wiretaps, now they can listen on your intellectual wiseacres and fired .
phone even when you are not talking on it. If you belonged to the FBI when J. Edgar
They can put bugs in your phone and hear Hoover was still alive, you had to see an almost
everything you are doing in your house . Do infinite number of godless communists all over
you think that you are not making porno this country. If you couldn't see that many
movies? Every time that you have sex, we don't godless communists, you only saw about 5,000
know how many government officials are of them, say, you couldn't stay in the FBI,
watching. You're probably all porno stars and because they knew there were millions of god-
you don't know it. So as more and more people less communists out there planning all sorts of
realize this, the hostility of the government mischief. So you either had to learn to become
escalates. The government gets more nervous a talented liar, or convince yourself that what
and spies on the people even more. This cycle the boss believed was the truth and put your-
continues up and up and up until the point self into self-hypnotic ideational trance and
where either the funding runs out or divine have a head full of shit so you were thinking
intervention occurs. Otherwise the paranoia just like J. Edgar Hoover. More and more the
escalates further on both sides ruling class has a burden of omniscience.
I don't trust the government. I often try Nobody else is allowed to tell them anything of
this, and I'll try it here tonight with a group what they see, hear, smell, taste or otherwise
largely of general semanticists. I've tried it sense of the existential continuum. And they
with all sorts of other groups; I'll try it with have to, by telepathy or some other method, try