DigitalDjigit said:The Prometheus Rising is pretty good even if all that exponentially increasing mentality stuff is a little dodgy. It seems so outdated now, 60's stuff that reached a peak with the 90's techboom in California.
mms said:hmm i'm not sure it's outdated, maybe the presentation and some of his language but people have defintley developed some of his ideas independently, others quietly become part of the orthodoxy etc, you can see prometheus rising ideas all over culture for better or worse.
And yet at the beginning of Quantum Psychology, RAW himself says that he is often called a materialist in some sectors because of his insistence on the method of scientific doubt!2stepfan said:RAW's a key figure and something of an icon and therefore a bit of a hate figure for the materialists, who can't bear to have their authority challenged...
One example drops off, another one comes in... bob's been writing books for a long time and some of the stuff he's written about will get evaluated differently later. He's not trying to get you to "believe" in the angel of mons, he's trying to get you to question your belief in belief itself. RAW's about developing skepticism about reality tunnels, especially your own. Wheras the fundamentalist materialists / dogmatic marxists / economic conservatives can't bear to have their [dominant] paradigm questioned, same as the inquisition in any era.johneffay said:This is not to say that I don't find some value in his writings, but some of the claims made for them are very overblown.
2stepfan said:RAW's a key figure and something of an icon and therefore a bit of a hate figure for the materialists, who can't bear to have their authority challenged...
I still like Illuminatus, though it's of its time, the Cosmic Triggers are really good, best of the bunch is Quantum Psychology, which "done properly" will really change how you think.
john eden said:Nothing is True: Everything is Permitted. But the bus is still late.
I think the materialist "authority" and the good old scientific method are still in rude health, to be honest. (Hey wow, this computer works and everything, and so does gravity!)
RAW and his fans would very much like to believe that they are outlaw thinkers, who have found out stuff that will shake the very foundations of society, were it not for The Man and his horrid "consensus reality".
There is some value in his writing and there is also a load of hippy wank.
But it has to be said that the stereotype of the RAW-hatin' "materialists" is far less problematic than the stereotype of slavish drug-addled retards who have used RAW's books as a justification for their sloppy thinking.
It's fine for RAW to criticise science, but anyone who criticises RAW, or suggests that his ideas are less than earth-shattering is a stooge for The Man, brainwashed by "consensus reality" and afraid of throwing off those mental chains (whoo whoo whoo).
Plus it has all gotten quite repetitious and boring over the last 20 years, has it not?
Where does he do that?john eden said:It's fine for RAW to criticise science
2stepfan said:I suspect you haven't actually read the books.
2stepfan said:Meanwhile there's plenty of fundamentalist materialists (whether communists or arch capitalists) who deny the possibility of anything other than a pure materialist viewpoint. He criticises them and propounds a critical agnosticism as a viable alternative.