Nihilism, metabelief and magick

From The Maze Where Realities Converge - the psychedelic encyclopedia of reality from The Ultimate Comment

People have a tendency toward obsessions - with a religion, with an artist, with an ideology, a political cause, or a lover. It can seem to that person at that time that the object of their obsession is the only thing that matters in the universe. They have constructed a 'master narrative', a universal explanation. And anyone else who can't see the importance of this one thing must be an idiot.

Yet it is evident that we don't live in a world where all men of sense believe in one thing. There are intelligent people who can explain with perfect reason and conviction that the most important thing in the universe is bringing about the Singularity, or that it is the poetry of Weldon Kees, or that it is death metal, or Jesus or ninjutsu. All are correct and all are blinkered.

We have a cognitive bias which often causes us to prefer a bad explanation to no explanation at all. The unexplained scares us, so we come up with superstitions and narratives to squeeze reality into.

One of the most popular master narratives is science. However, those who take the time to enquire into the scientific method itself will quickly see that science is not (as it is popularly understood) about universal truths and certainties. Rather, it is about contingencies, best guesses and probable scenarios. The scientific method involves gathering data and formulating guesses (i.e. 'theories') based on the data. Now, here's the problem as I see it: for any set of data points there are an infinite number of possible explanations, all equally valid. For example, absolutely anything can be explained by, "God did it." And absolutely anything can be explained by, "We're living in The Matrix." Anything can be explained by solipsism.

This is the reason there are so many divergent master narratives to explain the facts of the human condition. They are all just different ways of explaining our experience. Many of the major philosophical questions are cases of two sides debating equally valid theories based on the same data: the existence or non-existence of God, the existence or non-existence of the afterlife, the question of free will, the question of causality and more. The same is true of ethical issues like abortion, and of the clashes of political ideologies.

Because anything can be explained in any number of ways, no explanation is ever really correct. There are no right answers, no right judgments, no right beliefs. In the words of The Old Man of The Mountain, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." All we know are the data points themselves, the facts of our conscious experience - we never know why they occur or what they 'mean'. There are never truths - only impressions, never certainties - only contingencies, never facts - only perspectives.

This is not to say that we are not to act decisively. Nihilism should liberate the Will, not paralyze it. The death of master narratives does not leave us with nothing, rather it leaves us with nothing solid. Melt the ice of false purpose, false ideology and false law and one is left swimming in the river of chance, pragmatic, shifting beliefs, and the only law: "Do what thou wilt." Chaos magicians call it 'metabelief' or 'paradigm piracy' - adopting belief systems and casting them off again as is expedient. Belief systems are to be used as tools toward the end of achieving what you want. Mark 9:23: "Jesus said unto him, 'If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.' "

The past forty or fifty years has seen the rise of several hilarious religions: Discordianism, the Church of the Sub-Genius, sockism, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism and The Ultimate Comment. These cults mock all truth claims by the absurdity, prankishness and High Strangeness of their doctrines. In the Seventies, we saw chaos magick (also known as 'results magick') and the cult of the dice: doctrines eschewing purpose, reason and law to go back to what Nietzsche called “the oldest deity in the world”: chance and chaos.

Magick is the artful manipulation of subjective reality for the purpose of accomplishing the Will. In other words, whatever you do on purpose is an act of magick. The illusionist who makes us believe that he can levitate, or read minds, or that the violin he is trying to sell you is worth ten grand, or that he is the son of God, has a power that is not merely illusory, for he controls our impressions, and our impressions are all we have. As John Fowles said, "There is no truth beyond magic." The Ultimate Comment, with its focus on consciousness rather than reality and with the absurdity of its beliefs, implicitly recognizes universal contingency. It's only my room if you're in it.

There is a principle in cybernetics called the law of requisite variety, which states that the system capable of the most variety will control other systems. In other words, with flexibility comes power. Act decisively, with a strong subjective reality and then pay acute attention to the feedback from the things you attempt and respond to it with flexibility and intelligence.

So believe in whatever works for you, then stop believing in it when the belief is no longer an asset. Try shamanism, try ritual magick, try dianetics, try hypnosis, try science, try metacommentology, try conformity, try iconoclasm, try psychedelia, try greed, try honesty, try game theory, try complexity theory, try meditation, try energy manipulation, try Thelema, try Qabbalah, try business, try utilitarianism, try the dice, but never tie yourself into any perspective. To do so is to limit yourself psychically. Be limitless. Be spontaneous. Be a magician. Let variety be your habit, intermittency your routine, chance your guide and chaos your religion. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

- By Conor

Quotes

"It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical validity to any of them" - Aleister Crowley
"Truth is a pathless land." - Krishnamurti
"Pull the wool over your own eyes before someone else does!" - Reverend 'Bob' Dobbs of The Church of The SubGenius
"Nothing is true. Eveything is permitted." - Hassan i-Sabbah.
"There are no truths - only perspectives." The Antichrist
"When magicians learn to approach philosophy as a malleable art instead of an immutable Truth, and learn to appreciate the absurdity of man’s endeavors, then they will be able to pursue their art with a lighter heart and perhaps gain a clearer understanding of it, and therefore gain more effective magic. CHAOS IS ENERGY." - Malaclypse The Younger
"'I can't believe impossible things.' said Alice. 'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'" - Lewis Carroll. (Spending half an hour a day believing impossible things is, in fact, an excellent magickal exercise and highly recommended.)