...

All Roads Lead to Bob:

"...my theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated." --E.E. Cummings, Foreword to Is 5[1].

At dinner with a friend the other night, the friend said "There are no laws. We can do what we want." To paraphrase. But this is not true given any logical examination. We are not free to really act outside of socially prescribed roles without their being consequence. Being trans, for example, does seem to allow a liberation from flesh proscribing our selves. And yet to take those very actions you must either choose to do so legally or illegally[2]. If you choose to illegally do so, say by taking estrogen mailed to you through underground contacts, you are not actually acting without laws. You are understanding that there are laws, and you are sidestepping them. This very act of sidestepping them precisely gives the laws their inherent meaning. Taking the illegally obtained testosterone, for example, is an admission that there is a law. A law you have chosen to break. Your disavowal of the existence of the law actually creates the meaning of the law. In the same way, this is why we cannot and should not charge someone with murder or violence if they have not done the violence. We do have other laws for that. An ex police officer once explained to me the reason that so many people who go on to do horrific acts are released is that: the law steps in AFTER the thing has been done. It cannot be applied BEFORE the action. But wait! You might argue: what about attempted murders, or planning to do something illegal. Then, I can say to you that we agree: there is something DONE. Actions taken. And only AFTER the actions are taken does the law step in. The law is crafted through the actions that violate it.

Therefore, this idea that there are no laws itself crafts the laws that would diminish this very point. Anyone attempting to act this way will find that their privilege soon runs out-- at least in correspondence to how much wealth and power they have. The rules have long been noted to be different for different ruling classes. This is of course how I pushed back: our tangle of privileges makes us more or less likely to succumb to the application of the law.

Whether we like it or not there is a Real social order, in the Lacanian sense[3]. The Big Other of Zizek[4]. Like pornography it is the order that cannot be defined, but which rules us all. I can't say what it is, but I know it when I see it.

In Rebel Without a Cause, Jim rebels because he is expected to rebel. He joins with and falls out with teen racing culture. He flirts with bisexuality in the subtext if not overtly in the text[5]. The same with Jimmy in Quadrophenia[6]. When he says that he is a mod because we doesn't want to be like others, that's the disavowal of the order he is in: he has rejected the laws of society to join a gang with laws of its own. And those laws only work because they contrast with society[7]. The mods themselves would be meaningless if they were not precisely against established order. But they need the established order to justify their existence as a group of individuals, all alike.

That's what "What are you rebelling against?" "What have you got?" means in the Brando sense[8]. Back to the privileges: there are social roles we inhabit, worlds of privilege we have-- some more, some less. This is the point of intersectionality[9]: the systems of power that we live within give you freedom A vs someone else's freedom B and prevent us from mutual striving. The roles work against each other, and some are worse than others. To be non-male, non-white, non-moneyed is to have less room to move, less room to act.

So, what do we do with this? How do we avoid the boring solipsism of the Camusean rebellion on private matters[10]? First we need to reject such negations. The negative itself cannot be known, as we first have to know what we are negating. We have to understand what laws we say don't exist in order to reject them. Therefore, it is more accurate to say "I choose not to follow law that I do not like." This avoids the trap of having to claim the non-existence of something that does exist. Then because we have not positioned laws, traditions, customs, or any manner of social programming as a Big Other or Lacanian Real[11] that cannot be defined, we can work against or with them. But to say they do not apply to us, these laws, is to exactly make sure that all of them do apply by making them bigger than they are. By hiding them, brushing them under the rug, playing peekaboo with them as a child learning object permanence[12] might.

This is why a better watch word, what I hope my friend meant, was the old dictum "Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted"[13]. Take this in a real sense: the concept of nothing is true. And yet there is no way to understand this, not on a human level, when no/thing is itself a negation that requires us to understand the thing that is NOT. (This is why so many are squicked out by the poem Antigonish[14]-- "As I was going up the stair / I met a man who wasn't there".)

As for the second half of the statement, it is often misread. Everything is permitted means that all OPTIONS we can take are allowed. Nothing in the statement says there are no consequences for such action. Just because something is allowed, an action we can take, does not mean that there aren't results, feedback, or actions in response. It's half of a thought left as an experiment to see if those who hear it can understand why all things in the Discordian sense equal 5[15]. (Though E.E. Cummings explains it even better in the foreword to his book Is 5[16].)

Or, as a much sloppier esotericist said, "every man and woman is a star"[17]. If you know how to read you can read it twice: everyone is their own star OR everyone makes up one star. Both readings are correct. Yet they contradict each other. I hate to bring such a disagreeable person as Walt Whitman into this, but you know the quotation[18].

This brings us to a slightly easier to digest maxim. "Reality is what you can get away with"[19]. That sounds even easier, it allows for more maybe logic-- thanks RAW-- because it allows for yes/no/maybe states. But it is missing that analysis on the basis of privileges, social scripts, expectations, and roles[20].

A Latina woman can get away with some things easier than others, but often only when adopting and working within the assigned roles and social expectations. So for an Asian immigrant's first generation child. It might be far easier for cis, white, male Robert Anton Wilson to get away with things than others[21]. There's power inherent when you've worked at a social institution as fake-disreputable as Playboy[22], for instance (which is a containment: if we have a magazine for the "perverts" then we do not have to deal with them out here).

[Sidebar: In fact, that is the whole impetus behind the attempt to censor kink at pride: you can have your fetishes, the moralist says, as long as I don't have to see them. Otherwise I might have to contend with the fact that I might have repressed similar fetishes. I am sure this thought will offend the kind of pervert who wants to hide kink ashamedly rather than say this is a part of human experience and there are safe ways to participate that can be talked about and learned when not hidden. Suppression makes things MORE visible, and your fetishistic disavowal[23] is showing.]

Now, Robert Anton Wilson suggested we remember we live in reality tunnels[24] where we all see reality in slightly different ways based on our conditioning and even the roles we have in society. He also said he didn't know anything but he had many suspicions. He suspected, for instance, that you could not lift your feet off the ground and fly. So I think he might have, and probably did in longer form, meant something a bit more nuanced when he wrote "Reality is what you can get away with"[25]. There's a caveat there, a maybe logic to it: "Reality is what you can get away with, defined by the privileges and limits you navigate." Oh there's that nothing again. The Big Other[26]. The Real. Denying the nothing is like not mentioning the elephant in the room. Rather rude to the elephant, and depressing whining boy Camusean solipsism that too easily allows us to ignore the necessity of interaction with community both chosen and imposed. With increasing caveats and acknowledgment that even his pithy oneliners need further refinement and maybe logic: One must imagine Robert Anton Wilson happy.

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HELPS

1. E.E. Cummings, Is 5: In the foreword of Is 5, Cummings emphasizes that his approach to poetry is neither original nor complicated, acknowledging that he works within existing traditions rather than inventing something new.
2. Trans liberation and legality/illegality of medical transition: Refers to the legal barriers and underground methods transgender individuals may navigate to access medical transition, highlighting the tension between self-determination and legal structures.
3. Lacan’s Real: In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the "Real" refers to the raw, unmediated reality that exists beyond language and the symbolic order, a part of life that cannot be fully expressed or captured by societal systems.
4. The Big Other (Lacan/Zizek): Lacan’s "Big Other" represents the symbolic order—society's rules, norms, and values—that govern individual behavior, often unconsciously. Žižek extends this concept to show how ideology functions through these invisible social structures.
5. Rebel Without a Cause (1955 film): A classic film where the protagonist, played by James Dean, rebels against societal expectations. His rebellion is driven more by the expectation that he should rebel, reflecting a deeper conformity to social roles.
6. Quadrophenia (1979 film): A film that follows a young Mod in 1960s Britain, Jimmy, who rebels against societal norms by joining a subculture, only to find that even this counterculture has its own rules and constraints.
7. Mod culture: A British subculture from the 1960s known for its sharp fashion, modern music, and defiance of traditional norms, though it developed its own rigid codes and hierarchies, contradicting its original rebellious spirit.
8. "What are you rebelling against?" "What have you got?" (Brando in *The Wild One*): A famous line from Marlon Brando’s character, symbolizing aimless rebellion. It critiques the emptiness of rebellion without a specific cause, where the act of rebelling becomes more important than its purpose.
9. Intersectionality: A framework that analyzes how different aspects of a person's identity (like race, gender, class) overlap, creating unique experiences of oppression or privilege within intersecting systems of power.
10. Camus and rebellion: Camus' rebellion in The Myth of Sisyphus is criticized here as solipsistic and fuckboyish, focusing on the individual's personal defiance against life's absurdity without engaging with collective action or social change. This kind of rebellion is seen as hollow, self-indulgent, and ultimately useless for addressing real oppression.
11. Lacanian negation: In Lacanian theory, negation is how we define ourselves by rejecting what we are not. This helps construct identity and social boundaries, but also reveals the limitations of understanding oneself solely in opposition to others.
12. Object permanence: A developmental psychology concept introduced by Jean Piaget, describing how children learn that objects (and people) continue to exist even when they cannot be seen. Though it’s often brought into discussions of psychoanalysis, it’s not a Lacanian or Freudian term. However, this essay specifically refers to a writing by Freud: Freud discussed a version of object permanence through the fort/da game, where a child repeatedly throws an object away and retrieves it, symbolizing the child's attempt to master the anxiety of absence and presence, particularly in relation to the mother.
13. "Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted" (Hassan-i Sabbah, related to countercultural and anarchist philosophy): Attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah, this phrase is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean moral anarchy but instead suggests that without inherent truths, people are free to define their own actions, though consequences still exist.
14. Poem "Antigonish": A haunting poem by William Hughes Mearns, famous for the lines “As I was going up the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there,” which plays on the unsettling nature of negation and absence. The next two lines are "He wasn't there again today / I wish, I wish he'd go away..."
15. Discordianism: A satirical religion that embraces chaos, absurdity, and paradox to critique structured order and authority, often through humor and contradictory statements.
16. E.E. Cummings, Is 5 (repeated reference): A reiteration of Cummings’ belief that his techniques were not innovative or complicated, grounding him in a tradition of using simple and existing forms, despite his experimental reputation.
17. Aleister Crowley’s "every man and woman is a star": A phrase from Crowley’s Thelemic philosophy, suggesting that each individual is unique with their own path and purpose, yet also part of a collective cosmic order.
18. Walt Whitman (contradiction quote): From Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the line “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes” emphasizes the complexity and contradictions inherent in human identity.
19. Robert Anton Wilson (RAW): A writer associated with countercultural and anarchistic thought, known for his exploration of subjective realities, skepticism of absolutes, and the concept of "reality tunnels."
20. Reality tunnels (Robert Anton Wilson): Wilson’s term for the subjective perspectives individuals form based on their personal conditioning and experiences, which shape how they perceive reality, often leading to drastically different worldviews.
21. Playboy as a social containment of subversive sexuality: Playboy magazine, despite its reputation for sexual liberation, is framed here as a containment device, providing a socially accepted outlet for sexual subversion, thereby keeping it from truly challenging societal norms.
22. Fetishistic disavowal (psychoanalytic concept): Refers to the process where someone acknowledges something exists but simultaneously denies its significance or their relationship to it. In this context, those suppressing kink at Pride are accused of this, as they highlight what they wish to hide, thereby making it more visible.
23. Privilege theory: A social theory exploring how certain identities (race, gender, class, etc.) provide systemic advantages or disadvantages, shaping one's access to resources, freedom, and power within society.
24. Reality as conditional based on privilege: The idea that one's experience of "reality" is heavily influenced by their social privileges, shaping what is possible or permissible for them to do or experience based on their identity and social status.
25. The Big Other (repeated): A further reference to Lacan's idea of the Big Other, which represents the external social norms and structures that influence and control individual behavior, often subconsciously.
26. Solipsism (Camus reference): Camus is criticized in this essay for falling into solipsism, a philosophical idea that prioritizes the self’s perspective above all else. This critique portrays Camus' rebellion as stupid and self-indulgent, focused on personal grievances without engaging with broader social realities, making his rebellion pointless and ineffectual.