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A review by vonmustache
Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World by Robert Anton Wilson
3.0
The first half of this book accords fairly well with my own epistemology at this point. Wilson argues that we must recognize the limitations of our perception, and the impossibility of accessing any kind of Aristotelian reality outside of the subjective lenses of Human nervous systems of tools. The only kinds of statements we can meaningfully make, Wilson argues, are experiential/operationalist descriptors (ex: « this metal is hard » vs « to my soft and squishy human body, this metal appears hard »). This is fascinating, and posits a transactional relationship between observer and object. Every observation reveals observer and object alike; nothing can be proved to possess an essence « in itself » because we can’t verify statements like « this metal is hard » except through the lenses of our perceptions.
The book loses me a bit in the second half - I feel as though Wilson’s notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy appears to suggest an essentialist vision in several cases (not to mention, in my view, an inaccurate and indeed racist one). Ex: someone told They are lazy will exhibit symptoms of laziness, according to Wilson. But « lazy » as a definitional category is a label imposed by an observer, which can include the self, but which lacks any kind of rigid materialist definition. What « is » laziness?
For that matter, Wilson outlines a typology of 4 basic selves that each have their own reality tunnel. Perhaps this model is sufficient. But I certainly don’t see why these selves should be inflexible. Why does a person always have a « bottom dog » temperament, once they get one? Couldn’t support later in life change our self conception? (Or perhaps a more grisly but concrete example: couldn’t a horrible and dehumanizing experience like torture make a « top dog » personality a « bottom dog » one?)
Still, the subjectivism and the importance of recognizing the observer-created nature of reality (which is not to say, solipsistically, that there IS no other reality - only that I have no way of proving it, because I remain trapped within my own brain) is very intriguing.
The book loses me a bit in the second half - I feel as though Wilson’s notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy appears to suggest an essentialist vision in several cases (not to mention, in my view, an inaccurate and indeed racist one). Ex: someone told They are lazy will exhibit symptoms of laziness, according to Wilson. But « lazy » as a definitional category is a label imposed by an observer, which can include the self, but which lacks any kind of rigid materialist definition. What « is » laziness?
For that matter, Wilson outlines a typology of 4 basic selves that each have their own reality tunnel. Perhaps this model is sufficient. But I certainly don’t see why these selves should be inflexible. Why does a person always have a « bottom dog » temperament, once they get one? Couldn’t support later in life change our self conception? (Or perhaps a more grisly but concrete example: couldn’t a horrible and dehumanizing experience like torture make a « top dog » personality a « bottom dog » one?)
Still, the subjectivism and the importance of recognizing the observer-created nature of reality (which is not to say, solipsistically, that there IS no other reality - only that I have no way of proving it, because I remain trapped within my own brain) is very intriguing.