If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably sensed this coming. Expect a slight change in direction here, nothing radical. I’m just going with the flow. Where am I going with all this knowledge and experience I’ve been acquiring? Here is an idea:
Because, really, all the counterculture and occultism is, is simply another approach to trying to understand the world. Whether it’s the best one is very much debateable in my opinion, but at the end of the day there are a lot of people that want to be successful, make enough to get by, and help others. While occultists may be focusing on problems too deep to be adequately acted upon by their current capacity for social interaction, many brilliant thinkers out there are innovating new ways (thinking magically and manifesting intent) and aiding their communities.
Today I see art students trained by guilt-driven semioticians or post-modern theorists, afraid of the materiality of their medium, whether painting, music, poetry or virtual reality (since, given the framework dogma, every culture creates its own reality). The key to break away from this is to cut language down to size, to give it the importance it deserves as a communications medium, but to stop worshipping it as the ultimate reality. Equally important is to adopt a hacker attitude towards all forms of knowledge: not only to learn UNIX or Windows NT to hack this or that computer system, but to learn economics, sociology, physics, biology to hack reality itself. It is precisely the ‘can do’ mentality of the hacker, naive as it may sometimes be, that we need to nurture everywhere.
July 13, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Media magic. Memetic magic. All that shit. “p0s+-k405” a g0g0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!1111!
July 13, 2006 at 7:11 pm
excellent, pre-order representing.
July 13, 2006 at 7:39 pm
No “magic” no “memetics.” Natural language, baby.
July 13, 2006 at 11:44 pm
All I need to say is, duh, though I’m not sure what the line about “social interaction” means.
July 14, 2006 at 1:54 am
It means that many occultists are too smart to deny the crazy shit learned from esoteric schools of thought, but are too fucking stupid to apply it on any scale of use ? socially or personally.
Not everyonee. But many. Sorta like the science convo we are having.
Colin Wilson touched on this stuff: it’s perhaps not so healthy to the individual to zip on ahead if they lack the more base wisdoms to remain useful, to themselves and/or others.
July 16, 2006 at 7:44 am
Do you feel it pumping on your tea-bag?
The world seems to be stretching it’s ligaments for the 100 meter sprint.