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OK, we will ask Yoko Ono.” Then he rings a number. Someone answers. He asks a question and writes down a number. He phones this number. Someone answers. He asks a question and writes down another number. He does this two or three more times – after which he is actually speaking to Yoko in New York. This was not more than 10 minutes after I had half-jokingly suggested her name. A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of “monopoly in the means of production.” Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual’s brain.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson
For instance, see Do The Illuminati Really Exist? by Massimo Introvigne, Center for Studies on New Religions . Retrieved 3 March 2006.
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The '70s: Let's just say that the Illuminatus! trilogy is very much of its time, although this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just like Enclosure Acts," I said hollowly. "One day the land belongs to the people. The next day it belongs to the landlords." Creepy Uncle: the man who made Atlanta Hope the woman she became and who indirectly inspired Telemachus Sneezed.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea | Goodreads The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea | Goodreads
He [Hegel] is perfect... Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn't make sense in any language. Certain Damnations are socially and intellectually necessary, of course. A custard pie thrown in a comedian’s face is Damned by the physicist who analyzes it according to the Newtonian laws of motion. These equations tell us all we want to know about the impact of the pie on the face, but nothing about the human meaning of pie-throwing. A cultural anthropologist, analyzing the social function of the comedian as shaman, court jester, and king’s surrogate, explains the pie-throwing as a survival of the Feast of Fools and the killing of the king’s double. This Damns the subject in another way. A psychoanalyst, finding an Oedipal castration ritual here, has performed a third Damnation, and the Marxist, seeing an outlet for the worker’s repressed rage against the bosses, performs a fourth. Each Damnation has its values and uses, but is nonetheless a Damnation unless its partial and arbitrary nature is recognized. The poet, who compares the pie in the comedian’s face with Decline of the West or his own lost love, commits a fifth Damnation, but in this case the game element and the whimsicality of the symbolism are safely obvious. At least, one would hope so; reading the New Critics occasionally raises doubts on this point.Real Life Writes the Plot: Wilson and Shea's initial inspiration for the novel was the wide range of Conspiracy Theorist nutbars of all persuasions whose letters they read as editors for Playboy. They did then look further and, lo, high as they were they saw the founding of a great republic and proclamations hailing new gods named Due Process and Equal Rights for All. And they saw many in high places in the republic form a separate cult and worship Mammon and Power. And the Republic became an Empire, and soon Due Process and Equal Rights for All were not worshipped, and even Mammon and Power were given only lip-service, for the true god of all was now the impotent What Can I Do and his dull brother What We Did Yesterday and his ugly and vicious sister Get Them Before They Get Us. World of Mysteries: The main storyline does get resolved, but there are lots of side plotlines which are either completely unresolved or provide contradictory answers regarding "who's behind what" and "who works for whom" (such as Mama Sutra's story about the Cult of the Yellow Sign). George Washington may have been secretly replaced by Adam Weishaupt, "founder" of the Bavarian Illuminati.