TESTAMENT

RUSHKOFF says - "My DC comic series 'TESTAMENT is now available in a single, digital “omnibus” volume via ComiXology http://cmxl.gy/1dPSOdd

In some ways, I think Testament is my most important work. Instead of merely talking *about* narrative, economics, sigil magic, and the Bible, I'm actually doing it. The purpose of Testament was to predict the world of crypto-currencies that we're entering right now, and show how this story has happened before. This moment is exactly what Torah was talking about - not in the sense of predicting the future, but in the sense that this is the perennial human story. 

I think having it all in one place at one time really makes the story SO much clearer. I always wanted this to be in one volume, so you can really feel the characters - especially the Gods, who live *between* the panels on page. 

I have written most of my books way too early. Testament is really about this exact moment. And it's also the oldest story we know."
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 And I say great! I love this comic and was super psyched to get to participate in the small way of formatting it for digital release and designing the cover collage. I wish it a very happy and healthy digital life! - bc

Rushkoff's New Book

You can find Douglas Rushkoff's new book "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commandments for a Digital Age" at O/R Books (as well as Amazon, kindle, etc). If you email a completely empty message (no title or content) to studyprogram@orbooks.com you will get a generous 24 page PDF chapter-by-chapter breakdown, with additional study suggestions.

LIFE INC. By Douglas Rushkoff

I very greatly recommend Douglas Rushkoff's new book LIFE INC. How the world became a corporation and how to take it back. I would love it if very many people read this book, and then worked out a way to collectively act on it. Not to say Life, Inc. has all the answers, but it certainly raises great questions which could go a long way towards deconstructing the apparently intractable global financial "crisis," amongst other deficiencies of the corporatist landscape.

Rushkoff has been releasing an attention span friendly series of dispatch videos elucidating the main topics of the book. I very much hope that these ideas begin to inform the general socio-economic discourse. I don't at all mean to suggest that these are ideas everyone needs to believe, but rather that these are the topics we need to discus.





Beyond just the book and it's multimedia accoutrements, Rushkoff has also taken to the airwaves in the service of bottom up, locally organized, open source, participatory culture.

Archives of Previous Shows
Here's a recent episode where Douglas interviews Paul Krassner!

And hey, why not! Here's a great talk Douglas gave to the Institute of General Semantic,
"Don't Change Yourself, Change the World"


I've gotten to know Douglas over the last few years via the Maybe Logic Academy and consider him very much the real McCoy.

Here's a guy who can appear on stage at a Disinfo con w/ RAW & Grant Morrison, proclaiming victory for the "counter culture", while also winning awards for his PBS Frontline documentaries.

Rushkoff can write a cyberpunk, psychedelic comic book series like Testament for Vertigo, while also writing level headed media theory for the New York Times.

He can play keyboard in Genis P Orridge's Psychic TV & talk politics on NBC Nightly News w/ Brian Williams.

Douglas Rushkoff is a viral media explosion waiting to happen, hell he coined the phrase after all! His bright ideas are welcome on boingboing.com, time magazine, comic book resources, NPR, ONLY MAYBE, CBS Sunday Morning, etc, ad infinitum AND! on july 15th, the Colbert Report.

I don't think there are very many people about whom I could honestly say this, but if Rushkoff does well, I think we all do well, so I say he gets the big push. Good luck, Doug!

Just a coincidence!

If you read the extended Comments on the previous post, you will know that Ben Mack shares a respect for RAW (Robert Anton Wilson) and Bucky Fuller, and others that this blog references (like Hakim Bey, or Kurt Vonnegut) - and for honesty in communication.

Poker Without Cards

For fellow MLA students interested in treating Poker Without Cards as a text for our Reading Group, but who feel resistance to Ben as a ‘marketeer’ – I recommend taking an hour to watch/listen to this interview. The book does not refer to all his thinking, but covers a period when BM found himself incarcerated in a mental institution after a breakdown, and got casually informed that he ‘was’ a paranoid schizophrenic. Later that diagnosis got retracted (because he rebuilt himself in a way that someone with that diagnosis couldn’t have done). He didn’t receive any kind of apology. It brings to mind Timothy Leary’s incarceration for ‘dangerous thinking’ – and also the approach that R.D.Laing took to people in similar states of mind, back in The Sixties.

Go to Grey Lodge for a pirate PDF edition Or Second Attention.
[spoiler alert: Lulu Review of the book]

You could also research Ben Mack’s marketing lectures (1h20m), and books, and stuff, but that might set off your prejudices. Some of us have remarked on the fact that he set up a website entitled “What Would Bill Hicks Have Said”, and have countered it with Bill’s quotes about people in advertising. Well, BM makes a distinction (in this video) between marketing and advertising. I leave you to tease out the distinction. Having nothing in particular I wish to sell, I don't know how he can help me with his seminars (I don't even have much desire to 'make more money') but if he can use all those skills to get fresh drinking water to everyone on the planet, then I think he deserves all the support he can get. (rant over)

Genius comes in many forms

It seems that BM counts as some kind of ‘genius’ and they sometimes prove uncomfortable as companions, and often get 'misunderstood'. Think of Orson Welles, maybe.

Please bear in mind that what I write here remains a personal opinion, and not a ‘policy statement’ that the MLA Admin supports – this blog has no direct affiliation with the management group of MLA or RAW’s literary estate. You can see it as a critical fanzine if you like.

The Maybe Logic Academy

The Maybe Logic Academy attracts people fascinated by a wide range of subjects and approaches (magick, NLP, intelligence increase, conspiracy theory, psychosomatic medicine, creativity, etc) – we don’t always agree, but we got given one rule (just the one) by RAW when he set this place up online where we could study with him (and other tutors), and interact with each other - and which forms some kind of legacy.

If you can’t achieve tolerance, at least attempt courtesy.

Such an approach to debate still seems rare (if not unique!) in online discussion spaces, and remains one of the reasons that I still spend many unpaid hours promoting and supporting it (even with the current incarnation of the forum 4.0, which has bugs which annoy some of the participants).

I have failed several times in my own attempts at courtesy, especially around the area of magic/magick (which Ben lucidly elucidates in the interview), but have learned from that, and continue to attempt to improve my communication.

Please do not find any significance in the fact that my avatar shares initials with Ben Mack! I remain an entirely separate entity. It’s just a coincidence, just a coincidence (repeat this mantra after me “It’s just a coincidence!”)

PS: This seems like a good place to throw a link to Bobby's summary of Rushkoff's Technologies of Persuasion course - over at DeOxy.

That's as maybe...

A new set of courses has started, and a whole new bunch of people arrived - mingling in the general forum, but coming for Erik Davis's course on The Crazy Wisdom of Philip K Dick (why oh why didn't I join that one!) and Douglas Rushkoff's course - TECHNOLOGIES OF PERSUASION: From Propaganda to Paranoia - which started today. (Well, OK, yesterday by 5 minutes in the UK time zone, but San Francisco has 5 p.m, and New York 8 p.m. on October 1st, so I feel partly correct!) You can find an interview with Rushkoff in the Info-Cache blog here (or see link in the right hand column).

It feels terrific to have an infusion of fresh minds arriving through different channels, and the 'old crew' seem revitalized themselves, producing a really exciting new edition of the Quarterly.

Go to DeepLeaf Productions (permanent link on the right) for details of future courses, like Antero Alli's much anticipated Astrologik: Astrology Without Tears, starting 29 October.

Starhawk and Phil Farber have courses scheduled for November...so on we go...

Bogus MLA Courses

Accept no cheap substitutes! Fakes and Simulations have flooded the market!
For three years now, the MLA has offered high-quality online courses to people from all around the world [but only in English, so far].

Robert Anton Wilson ran all the first few courses, but slowly the range of tutors has expanded, and also the subjects tackled. Current instructors include Patricia Monaghan, Rev. Ivan Stang, Philip H. Farber, Antero Alli, Peter J. Carroll, Starhawk, R. U. Sirius, Douglas Rushkoff and David Jay Brown.

Of course, not everyone has sufficient time to study, and those with time on their hands may not have the money…but you can always join the general forum, for the flavour of the place. If you understand the freelance life you may understand why tutors need paying (!) and the course fee also means you get a closed environment, with concentrated energy from other students, rather than the potentially dispersive/disruptive content of free-for-all forums, which you can find on the web on almost any subject, and which certainly have a value of their own.

As RAW graduated to His Serene Absence earlier this year, we can never complete some of the assignments he set us. The feedback he got from participants meant he continued to tune his teaching methods and subject matter from course to course. He would certainly have noted a certain disappointment in sombunall students that in one of his last (and very ambitious) 12-week courses [The Tale of The Tribe] we failed to cover all the ground that the Syllabus hinted at. As it happens, those of us who enjoyed the course did not mind that we focussed on just some of the material on offer (we still assumed we could do pick-ups later). You can only do so much in 3 months.

Anyway – for those who wanted less Joyce and Pound, and more on the communications/information people of the 20th Century, I have begun encouraging the creation of brief teasers/tasters or possible courses in the open forum. And yes, I did mean them as a joke, before you ask…MLA may eventually initiate self-directed courses on some of these, or seek out appropriate tutors, but meanwhile you can join in relaxed conversation about McLuhan, Gregory Bateson, Bucky Fuller, Shannon, Bandler, Korzybski, Nietzsche, etc.

[2014 update] Although that generation of the forum has gone into hiding, I did find a link to that thread on the Wayback Machine.  For what it's worth.   aka Bogus

And so dear friends, you'll just have to carry on...

...the dream is over... [John Lennon - God - 1970]

For full details of MLA activities you can always subscribe to the newsletter (check out Deep Leaf Productions or the Maybe Logic Academy links on the right) but we have a lot of interesting courses coming up this year, as well as a slightly different way of structuring things.

Update: MLA v 4.0 went live at http://www.maybelogic.net/

MLA has now got some areas open to the public, details on the link above, but in brief:

MLA campus and features are organized via three levels of access: Public, Registered, Student. Anyone can visit the site with access to the RAW Library, Info-Cache blog, Maybe Quarterly, MLA Forum (read only), etc. And anyone can also register with the site which enables one to post in the Public Forum, contribute to site content like Info-Cache blog, web archive, MQ, Public (chat) Lectures, etc. However only students have access to MLA student features like Personal Messages, Chat room, full MLA Forum, etc.

Semester System

MLA 4.0 begins the semester system. It's pretty simple: there are 6 courses from 2007 January - June; and six from July - December. If you take a Semester One course, you have full MLA Student Access through Semester One. If you enroll in a Semester Two course you'll have student access through Semester Two. Full 2007 student access is granted if you enroll as a full time student to either of the semesters.

2007 MLA Semester One

Inner Compass - Starhawk, Jan 29 - March 11
Timothy Leary - RU Sirius, Feb 26 - April 27
Mavericks of Medicine - David Jay Brown, March 19 - May 13
Earth As Teacher - Starhawk, April 23 - June 3
Angel Tech - Antero Alli, May 21 - July 15
Buddhist Tantra - Jonathan Landaw, June 18 - July 29

2007 MLA Semester Two

Goddess Path- Patricia Monaghan, July 16 - Sept 7
Crowley Tarot - Lon Milo DuQuette, Aug 13 - Sept 30
Visionary Art - Erik Davis, Sept 10 - Nov 4
Technologies of Persuasion - Douglas Rushkoff, Oct 1 - Nov 25
Astrologik - Antero Alli, Oct 29 - Dec 22
Altered States - Philip H Farber, Nov 26 - Jan

To think, that in 2004 Bob taught all the courses going!