PROMETHEUS RISING mixture of technologese and "counter culture" slang that has since become my most frequent style in nonfiction. (It's Robert Anton Wilson based on the way I actually speak.) When I tried Falcon Introduced by Israel Regardie next, they accepted it within 48 hours, and I received the NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS advance check within the next 48 hours. TEMPE, ARIZONA U.S.A. "Oh frabjous day!" A month later, I heard from Tarcher again: he had changed CONTENTS his mind and decided he wanted the book after all. I was in Preface to the Second Edition 11 one of my periods of acute poverty then (something that Introduction 17 happens periodically to all freelance writers) and it was with 1. The Thinker & The Prover 23 great effort that I refrained from telling Mr. Tarcher to go 2. Hardware & Software: The Brain & Its Programs 33 fuck himself. I just told him I had a contract with another 3. The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit 45 publisher. 4. The Anal Emotional Territorial Circuit 61 With Falcon as publisher, I then inserted the 5. Dickens & Joyce: The Two-Circuit Dialectic 85 acknowledgments page, giving Leary the credit he deserved 6. The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit 93 right up front, and added a dedication to him. Falcon, as I 7. The Time-Binding Dialectic: Acceleration & Deceleration expected, did not object. Falcon has always served as an 105 alternative to Establishment publishing, just as Paideia once 8 The "Moral" Socio-Sexual Circuit 121 served as a similar alternative to the academic 9. Mindwashing & Brain Programming 149 Establishment. 10. How To Brain-Wash Friends & Robotize People 161 Prometheus was one of Falcon's first books and, I think, the 11. The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit 177 first done with computerized typesetting; as usual with 12. The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit 195 such pioneering efforts, it emerged with a phalanx of typos 13. Introduction to the Metaprogramming Circuit 207 that have embarrassed me considerably over the years. 14. The Meta-Programming Circuit 217 (When the San Francisco Chronicle first computerized they 15. Different Models & Different Muddles 227 had similar problems. 16. The Snafu Principle 239 I remember one story in which the Chief of Police, 17. Quantum Evolution 253 denouncing drugs, rambled off into a sentence about the 18. The Non-Local Quantum Circuit 265 thrill of meeting Mickey Mouse and Goofy. I assume that 19. Prometheus Rising 271 line came from another story but it made the Chief sound Appendix 283 as if he had gotten into some weird chemicals himself.) In this edition, I have corrected these errors, where I could PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION find them; I know too much now to think I found all of Screw the government!— them. (Wilson's Tenth Law: no matter how many times a Legends of the Fall writer proofs a book, hostile critics will always find at least Screw the middle class! one error that he missed.) — Evita I have also updated every place where I thought updating Like most of my books, this text emerged only partly from seemed necessary. I even added a few new ideas (which, of my conscious design and partly from suspicious accidents. course, seem brilliant to me just because they are new) and It actually began as a Ph.D. dissertation called "The some new jokes and generally gave the text a badly- Evolution of Neuro-Sociological Circuits: A Contribution to needed face-lift. It is still one of my favorite books, and the Sociobiology of Consciousness," which I wrote in 1978- seems to rank high in the estimation of most of my fans. 79 for an alternative university called Paideia. At that time, In Germany-Switzerland-Austria in the late 1980s, three Paideia ranked as State Approved, the highest rating given German versions existed simultaneously—a deluxe edition to alternative universities in California, where we have from Sphinx Verlag of Zurich, a mass-market paperback alternatives to everything and the state feels required to from Rowalt Verlag of Hamburg, and an even cheaper classify the alternatives on a scale of "experimental" to pirate edition from the busy troglodytes of the unterwelt. totally bonkers. Alas, Paideia, having achieved relative The last, of course, paid no royalties but, by indicating that respectability as an "alternative," later joined with a much I had three audiences at three economic levels, persuaded more radical and Utopian outfit, Hawthorn University, and me feel like a very popular writer in Mitteleuropa. lost its top rank among counter-culture educational As I contemplate this tenth printing of a "far out" or contraptions in California, falling from Approved to "freaked out" book that began its career back in 1978, I Authorized, a much lower rating. The whole megilla then feel only mildly embarrassed by the predictions that proved joined into several flakey outfits loosely allied, none of over-optimistic. (I have revised them, of course, in keeping which were recognized at all by the state, which suited the with my current knowledge and best guesses). I feel much new honchos perfectly, since they did not recognize the more astonished, and pleased, that many of the predictions state either. now seem much less shocking than when I first published In Ireland in 1982, stuck with a dissertation which I liked a them. Indeed, the wildest and most "Utopian" future-scans lot and a Ph.D. diploma which, due to the collapse of in here are precisely the ones that have had the greatest Paideia, looked less impressive, I decided to rewrite the scientific support in the 1990s. To see two decades ahead, manuscript in more commercial form. The first change even in a few areas, counts as some sort of success in the consisted of removing all the footnotes (about two of them Futurism game. And every bulletin from the embattled MIR per sentence) which gave the original a truly academic stink space station reminds me that if my space forecasts but would annoy the average reader. Then I expressed projected "too much too soon," part of what I expected myself a little more bluntly (and perhaps snidely) in many does in fact already exist and the rest is obviously evolving. places, adding much to the humor and nothing to the good I feel more chagrined about my lyrical evocation of taste. I also wrote a few more chapters, created all the Intelligence Intensification. In the 1970s, I simply did not exercises, and sketched out diagrams for the illustrations. recognize the extent to which the 1960s "youth revolution" I then, with craft and cunning, removed most of the had terrified our ruling Elite, or that they would try to references to Dr. Timothy Leary from the early parts of the prevent future upsurges of radical Utopianism by book and only let his name begin to appear frequently after deliberately "dumbing down" the educational system. What about the middle. I had good reason, based on experience, they have produced, the so-called Generation X, must rank to feel rather strongly that, just as Dr. Tim was blacklisted as not only the most ignorant but also the most paranoid by Establishment publishers at that time, any book openly and depressive kids ever to infest our Republic. and blatantly based largely on his ideas would also get I agree with outlaw radio star Travis Hipp that the paranoia thrown in the junk heap. and depression result inevitably from the ignorance. These I thought I now had a "popular" book, and maybe I almost kids not only don't know anything; they don't even want to did. The first publisher to whom I submitted it, Jeremy know.1 Tarcher, held it for a full year of meditation before rejecting They only realize, vaguely, that somebody has screwed it; his only explanation for the rejection concerned the them out of something, but they don't have enough zest or bile to try to find out who screwed them and what they true of his references to and explanation of Leary's eight were screwed out of. neurological circuits. Fortunately, this Age of Stupidity cannot last very long. We become familiar with them all over again, as if they had Already, most people know that if you want a good TV or not been introduced to us before. VCR, you buy Japanese; for a good car, Japanese or Moreover I love the subtle and almost invisible use of German, etc. mystical dogma that permeates all his writings. For Eventually, in order to compete, the Elite will have to allow example, consider the opening of Chapter Six. It quotes a a bit more education for American youth, before we sink particularly meaningful sentence from William S. Burroughs. fully to the level of a Third World nation. There is no mention—nor need there be—of any anterior The other day I saw a film called The Edge, which I teaching regarding this Law of Three, as it may be called. regarded as the best thing to come out of Hollywood since But one doctrine that emanated from a medieval mystical The Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps not coincidentally, this school philosophizes that there are always two contending flic also starred Anthony Hopkins. In one scene, Hopkins forces—for the sake of convenience labeled Severity and and his co-star, Alec Baldwin, seem in an absolutely Mildness—with a third that always reconciles them. It is hopeless situation, lost in the Arctic, stalked by a hungry paramount to this doctrine, which has been stated and bear, without weapons, seemingly doomed. Baldwin stated again in a dozen or more different ways throughout collapses, and Hopkins has a magnificent monologue, the centuries, culminating finally in the idea enunciated by talking Baldwin out of his despair.