Plotting the course for 2022...
What to expect from this Substack
Four years ago, while laid up in bed after breaking my back, I read through Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising. Like any curious explorer, I should have known the dangers of its consumption when confronted with a warning in its preface:
Wilson describes himself as a ‘guerilla ontologist,’ signifying his intent to attack language and knowledge the way terrorists attack their targets: to jump out from the shadows for an unprovoked attack, then slink back and hide behind a hearty belly laugh.
While a steady flow of pot brownies helped with pain management, the pairing of Bob’s hypertext with a mild psychedelic opened up my head enough for his ideas to slip in. Not only did his quantum content begin to deprogram my human biocomputer, but the exercises at the end of each chapter produced intense synchronicities, “downloads” during meditation sessions, and “clicks” in float tank sessions that felt like I was locking into new method of thinking, new ways of perceiving.
Of course, a tour through Bob’s Chapel Perilous accompanied these weird happenings. For about six months, there was no base to my reality. And for a very blessed but small portion of my trip, there was no difference between the observer and the observation - a non-dual experience that lasted about six weeks, fading with each recognition that an I was having an experience. The book fulfilled its promise to blow my mind to pieces.
Its most potent idea was that of a reality tunnel; the perception one has of the world based on ones experiences and the content. The narrow view of the world constricting ones thinking is called a reality tunnel. The books one reads, the world received in schooling, the company one keeps shape ones perspective.
Any ideology could be described as a reality tunnel. Ones nervous system was the reducing valve that created the walls and limits. As Wilson describes the fable of five blind men touching an elephant: Each man feeling the elephant has a different perception of the elephant, different descriptions, yet they all are describing the same thing, mapping the same territory. The reality tunnel was no different: Each receiver of information within the world creates their own reality tunnel. Though we all (assumingly) share a similar experience, our subjective experiences within the world can be wildly different, nuanced, and weird.
It was as powerful as any psychedelic. And I wanted to make my own.
I have spent the last few years rejoining those pieces that Bob so masterfully disconnected. However, I knew that I would only be making a map of an indescribable territory. I needed different building blocks, new threads to lace them, and new ways of modeling to make something that best describes the time spent questioning reality in Chapel Perilous. The project I decided to take on was to carry Leary’s and Bob’s idea of reality tunnels into the 21st Century.
Taking my notebook into new rabbit holes, I collected hundreds of pages of information - quotes, ideas, diagrams, methods, and characters. The most influential areas of exploration were Zen, cybernetics, postmodernism/post-structuralism, magic, neurology, psychology, language, anthropology, simulation theory, emergence theory, and propaganda. From these notes, I have constructed a new model of perception that I believe could be useful in the Digital Age. The model will be explained in a book called Reality Tunnels.
Over the course of 2022 (and ready for the 23rd year of this century) I’ll be writing and publishing Reality Tunnels. This Substack will be a medium for working out chapters, hashing out ideas, and getting feedback from readers. At the moment, I have the book fully researched and prepped, while the book content written sits at about 30%.
Along with receiving chapters of the book to read (probably not in the book’s order), I have other pieces I am working on that are short but potent, along with pictures, images, and diagrams of my progress.
During its production, I plan on working with artists to create images for the book and an organized (and interesting) propaganda campaign running up to its release. (If you or someone you know are interested in working with me on this, feel free to DM me on twitter: @TunnelsReality.)
So that I do not leave you without something to chew on, here is the outline of my first book, Reality Tunnels.
I.0 Introduction
I.1 Maps of Reality
I.1.1 Borges’ Map
I.1.2 A New Model of Reality
I.1.3 Three Goals
I.2 All Is Information
I.1.1 Collapsing Reality
I.1.2 Two Axioms & One Emergent Paradigm
W.0 Warning
1.0 Welcome to the Simulation
1.1 Our Simulated Reality
1.1.1 How Could We Know?
1.1.2 Bostrom’s 3
1.1.3 Resting on Simulation Theory
1.2 All is Virtual
1.2.1 When All is Info, What is Real?
1.2.2 Personality LARP
1.2.3 Anthropological Matrix
2.0 The Human Biocomputer
2.1 Information Processor
2.1.1 Flow of Information
2.1.2 Human Connectome & the Hard Problem
2.1.3 A Whirlpool Ontology
2.2 The Self-Referencing Machine
2.2.1 The Re-Membering Process
2.2.2 The Limits of Memory
2.2.3 The Illusion of Time
2.3 Patterns and Programs
2.3.1 Programs Within (DNA & Biology)
2.3.2 Behavioral Programming
2.3.3 Free Will?
2.4 The Extensions of Man
2.4.1 I, Cyborg
2.4.2 Blurred Realities (Digital Ontology)
2.4.3 Immersive Futures
3.0 Reality Tunnels
3.1 What Are Reality Tunnels?
3.1.1 A Brief History of Reality Tunnels
3.1.2 A 30,000 foot View
3.1.3 Emergent Perception
3.2 Beliefs and Reality Tunnels
3.2.1 The Filter of Belief
3.2.2 Three Types of Belief
3.3 The Crystallization of Reality
3.3.1 Like A Crystal
3.3.2 Five Stages
3.4 Consensus Reality Tunnels
3.4.1 What are Consensus Reality Tunnels?
3.4.2 Tight & Loose
4.0 Layer 1: Data & Possibility
4.1 There is Nothing…
4.1.1 Infinity
4.1.2 A Problem with Logic
4.2 But There is Order
4.2.1 The General System of the Simulation
4.2.2 Simplicity to Complexity
4.2.3 What is “Life”?
5.0 Layer 2: Information & Perception
5.1 The Edges of Perception
5.1.1 The Felt Presence of the Immediate Experience
5.1.2 The Limits of Perception
5.2 Altered Perception
5.2.1 Anomalies and Outliers
5.2.2 Aliens, Angels, DMT Elves
5.3 It’s All Relative!
5.3.1 Personal Reality Tunnels
5.3.2 Resting On Compassion
6.0 Layer 3: Knowledge & Language
6.1 Information Exchange
6.1.1 Language: Container of Truth
6.1.2 A Strong Whorfian
6.2 Worlds of Words
6.2.1 Shaping Worldview
6.2.2 Constrictor of Political Potential
7.0 Layer 4: Narrative & Identity
7.1 Story of My Life
7.1.1 A Personal Narrative
7.1.2 Closet of Identities
7.2 Consensus Narrative
7.2.1 A Social Story
7.2.2 The First Four Letters of Culture
8.0 Toward Tomorrow
8.1 Navigating Hyperreality
8.1.1 Our Social Situation
8.1.2 Haunted Futures?
8.1.3 “In” and “Of” Reality
8.2 A Way Out (A Manifesto)
8.2.1 Secede from the Broadcast
8.2.2 Constructing New Realities
8.2.3 Go Forth…
Take care, stay weird.
DRW