Free-for-all

BogusMagus 

(the wrangler for this edition)

In the Maybe Logic Academy many interesting minds meet, mingle and exchange signals. 

Robert Anton Wilson got quoted as saying this in an interview: 

"I've written about a lot of different subjects! I've got about ten different fan-clubs, depending on which book they've read!" 

Some of us have read them all. 

This does mean that the Maybe Logic Academy contains several sub-cultures that do not necessarily agree on everything, but in the forums we try to stick to the only house-rule:

 "If you cannot achieve tolerance, at least attempt courtesy."

I find it stimulating to surround myself with people with different experiences, beliefs and attitudes - especially intelligent, interesting and persuasive people. Among our members you may find artists, psychologists, musicians, teachers, writers, linguists, lawyers and homebodies, punk, hip-hop and academic - agnostics, Gnostics, people practising magick and people who talk to angels. You may also find secular humanist freethinkers like me, who find "belief systems" intriguing (and people's attachment to them) but can't help teasing people who hold any one belief particularly firmly, whether a political, psychological or religious belief. 

In return, some people may imply that I live a narrow little five-sense life, unaware of the leprechauns and aliens and higher intelligences who surround me, or of the universe next door. I don't consider myself one of those fundamental materialists - Marxists bore me rigid - I have always found fringe sciences, odd states of mind and unusual experiences fascinating - but I view them through the grids of an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, psychology student, actor and artist. 

In other words, I see them all as part of the human enterprise, manifestations of human imagination and creativity. I don't like to explain one mystery with another. It may sometimes appear helpful to point to unexplained events (like apparently significant coincidences) and give them a label (like Synchronicity) but too often people mistake a new label for an explanation. One mystery gets "explained" with another mystification. I prefer to reserve judgement and accept the mystery, if I can't solve the puzzle. Some people cannot tolerate "not knowing", and would prefer a false or nonsensical explanation to none at all. Keats talked of the ability of others less impatient or insecure:

" and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

I would perhaps balance that with our ability to immerse ourselves, like Method Acting, in states of mind where we temporarily believe something, or at least accept it as "real". Coleridge called this the "willing suspension of disbelief", which we all need to enjoy a film, a book, the theatre and possibly even our experiences of alternative realities: 

"... it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

 I would add Charles Fort to the group of people I empathise with most - people who enjoy the odd, the improbable, the inexplicable, and feel willing to brainstorm highly creative explanations, and even throw in jokes, rather than dismiss them sternly out of hand. The Science of Pataphysics comes in here, too. My own area of interest includes confidence tricksters, scam-artists, games, cheating, conjuring, "social engineering" (ask Kevin Mitnick), illusions and self-delusions. This edition may reflect my own mocking and sceptical tendencies, as earlier editions may have reflected their editor's absorption in poetry, music or magick. 

Each and every edition could turn out as a surprise for us all.

One can only hope.