Speaker 1 Music. Speaker 2 Well, I started going to church when I was about 14 years old, and I spent a couple of years as a friend of echo. Mormon became an agnostic. Speaker 1 So your religious belief did start with mormonism. Speaker 2 Yeah, I was about the 7th grade and well, no, I started with methodism, actually. Closest church around with methodism. So they I would go to methodist and round up all the kids in the block, and we would get a method of Sunday school. I was really into this religion. My parents would take me to church and leave me off and come to church afterwards and pick me up, but neither of them wanted anything to do with the mormonism themselves. So were they at these no, my grandfather had kind of a religion of his own, which he believed in god, and if you were good, you'd be treated right in the next life and all this, but a very simple thing. And I think that was basically I know that was basically my mother's religion, and it really didn't have a name. Eisenhower republican. Speaker 1 Okay, that's the first thing that you were politically yeah. All right. An Eisenhower republican. Speaker 2 Yeah. I I agree with every editorial in Los Angeles mirror, bridge, so thinkley wrote more authoritarian, middle of the rooms and conservatives. And it was in the military that my view was changed. Just before I went into the military, I discovered the first unitarian church in Los Angeles, and I was very left where you got a story on pages, and I just rather liked their attitude. There was a pamphlet there called unitarianism a three time loser, describing how the church had failed to evolve on three different occasions towards greater tolerance and away from racism and so forth. And I just liked that can door. But grade sent me a card postcard a few years back, and it said on it the question, what do you get when you cross a unitarian with jehovah's witness and answer someone who wanders door to door for no apparent reason? You kind of always wind up with the unitarians. You kind of feel like, why is this a church? It's a church for people who don't believe in god or something, basically. But at one time, big thing, because the unitarians believe there was only one god and not a trinity, and that's what it was all over why they were called unitarians were very persecuted for believing that god was not the marine corps with a bit of an interest in socialism and communism. Speaker 2 I remember my first unit when I went on active duty. I was sitting there one day reading a biography of wedding, and his sergeant walked by. Staff sergeant Christian signed his staff sergeant, and he says only, I looked the books you read sometimes, and I wonder about you. And I said, well, I'll know that enemy. And he said, well, I still wonder about you. And he walked out of the heart and I didn't know there was another staff sergeant sitting right behind me. Said to the guy next to me I've never met a group of people more proud of their own ignorance. And Staff Sergeant Susan, Marine Corps. Here's a guy who's willing to give his life fighting communism. He was willing to die, keep it and became everybody's way of life. I got a very disturbing statistic somewhere that said 60% of the people in the world went to bed hungry every night. I went to Manila when I was in the Philippines, on leave on a weekend. And one of the first things I saw when the cab driver left me off he left me off right next to the river. Poor section of the town. Speaker 2 City of walls, bombed out buildings that were bombed in the war where people lived in cardboard huts and so forth. And here's this man walking down the street in my direction who looks like a skeleton. I mean, he absolutely doesn't look like he's going to last another day or two. And if he passes me, I notice he has this real look at panic in his eyes. I always sort of imagined that as people started to that, their minds is all sort of faded away. But here he was, very alert and very afraid and very desperate looking. And the US. Had owned the Philippines until July 4, 1948, I believe it was. And this was going on. I just decided that my communist friend and Nick Granwich in San Francisco was right. That fill their stomachs and then worry about the civil liberties. Everybody would be responsible for creating the situation to be lined up in a shot. You could get very angry. And so I started reading books on communism. So I found this big, thick philosophical volume written by Jesuit about dialectical materialism. And so I read that at the same time I was reading the Bob Wood Gita. Speaker 2 They kind of seemed to me to be saying the same thing, which is, work hard and devote yourself to your duties and don't lust after results. Everybody will be happy and everything will be fine. And not long before I left, I was introduced to somebody else because they were an atheist, as was I. Same thing happened to us. Well, sketching with Mims. Yeah, I was one of those atheists. Speaker 1 You become a communist. Speaker 2 Well, I decided that when I came back to the United States the first thing I was going to do was contact Nick Granwich and ask him how it could be most useful. Because remember the Communist Party or the fellow traveler? Somebody said, hey, Carrie, there's another atheist in the outfit. Do you want a meeting? I said yeah. And they just merged our outfit with a couple of others and a lot of new people. And somebody took me over. His name was MIM. M-I-M. He said. Ryan Oswald has said communism is my religion. Said this book here in my Bible and it was out shrugged and he turned a gulps oath I will spend no part of my life for another man or ask any other man to spend any part of his life for me. My 1st 30th ethic I got it the epitome of amorality. And I was having a really hard time figuring out what kind of link between logic and ethics. There was no logical reason to be good and yet I wanted to be good and I wanted to punish people who were bad. I couldn't really justify it in terms of worldview. Speaker 2 I read Whitman when I was about 14 too. He had a big influence on me and through all these changes I decided to read Atlas, picked up a copy of the Oklahoma and started reading it on board ship a few days before I left and found it very convincing. But Simskill came by and he had been offending me from the officers that said I was a communist by saying he's more American than I am. He's more American than you are. Speaker 1 Before you really became a communist you moved right through that into the iron ran force. Speaker 2 Yeah, well, this thing a big change to me. I was in moving from scientific socialism to scientific capitalism. The important thing to me was that iron, random and atheist was the idea that there could be a morality based on rationality really appealed to me. That it's like building a bridge is the right way and the wrong way to build a bridge, and same with society, is the right way and the wrong way to destruct a society. And that gives you some basis to think of right and wrong and also dispensed in power of altruist morality, which was being a selfish thing. And I still feel content in my heart for altruist a lot of times. I went back to my base to get my belongings a couple of days before we sail from the processing barracks. I was in the acoustica and Bud walked up to me and he said well, if you decide what you're going to do when you get back to the state and I said yeah, I'm going to be a capitalist pig. And what I decided I would do is my big argument persuaded me in order for there to be enough production for you to feed everybody the producers had to be rewarded and so what if they got more than the other people because everybody was better off because they were in the world. Speaker 2 And so he was surprised and I showed him the book. Then I was reading it on the way back to the state. My only remaining doubt reading was maybe she wasn't an atheist because one scene there in Francisco Dencono destroys this Mexican village where Anaconda Copper was having. Speaker 1 Out of mind nationalized. But he says, but they left the church. They'll need it. Speaker 2 Because they'll need it. Speaker 1 But then at some point here, I'm very strong at it. By the time we got to the States, I had a whole new plan. I was going to go back to the Philippines I really liked, and I was going to over up when I communist, I was going to publish a newspaper page called The Red rooster. And I was going to open up a coffee tobacco shop and mail little atmospheric type places and kind of a point. I don't know what it was like. And I was going to raise chickens out going and invest in chicken farms because cheapest source of protein in the world is chicken. I was going to feed everybody the Philippines hogs. And nash was the shortest poem in English language is titled fleas. And the poem itself. Or the Adam had him. And so I composed the shortest prayer, which is, Jesus, pleases. Speaker 2 What do you think? Speaker 1 Try not to think. It always gets me in trouble. In 65, after the trauma of dealing with the people who love Kennedy so much and they wanted to kill me for hating and saying, I'm glad it was shot for knowing oswald and the marines and all that I went left to was living alone in Virginia. And I just decided to write Greg and we started corresponding with the discord. I suddenly discovered use for nonsense. I realized it was really therapeutic. It's a discordian torchlight parade. You can have just as much fun as fascist to have, but in the name of nonsense instead of something destructive. I saw a Steve Allen thing one night where he was reading this poem about people named clyde written by this guy named clyde, defending people named clyde. As the reading went on, one of these very rhythmic poems, and the numbers started dumbing in the van, and people started marching around the stage and start turning the lights on and off, and it really looks like celebrating nothing but confusion. Speaker 2 What is the relationship between discordingism or chaos and anarchy or what is the difference? Speaker 1 Well, anarchy is, contrary to popular belief, is a more sophisticated, higher level of social organization than we've got now. It's society that's so organized that it doesn't have to coerce anybody. And it's goreanism is kind of cowless. Cowus and chaosphers. Yeah. C-H-A-O-I-S-T cows. Sacred cow go around stirring up chaos as a provocateur, just well or whatever. And the ones that observe chaos and appreciate it. And then there's the knowers. They want to know better than the one Steve Wilson and Craig and I had a big argument about this. Somebody had already killed somebody in the name of the Scoria in Los Angeles, and somebody else had written free Press about it. I don't know what happened or not, but they wrote the letter. Great. Let it go. First out for me it was, well, what do you expect? This is a society people join by nailing their applications of membership on telephone poles. All kinds of people. Speaker 2 I was wondering about people who take discordionism as an endorsement for committing crimes against people. Speaker 1 I don't think that that's not an endorsement for anything. It's just reality with a name imposed on it of an organization. What was there already in unorganized form is still there in unorganized form, but now it has a name. That's the scoria society most discords have ever met one. And wilson's feeling about it all was that he shouldn't worry about what happens in the name of discordianism. It won't be appropriate for everything to happen in the name of discordianism. Speaker 2 Everything must happen before it can all be over. Speaker 1 1963, Greg Hill introduced me Marijuana and we got stone together. And it seemed to me, at the beginning, it seemed to me that something kind of constipated and self important about Iron Rand. I found somebody suggested that I read psychotherapy East and west by Alan watt, and so I read that I was enormously impressed. And his basic point was that what's wrong with the world is that everybody is so concerned about surviving. If we just live like the ten masses as a wife were a dream, we'd all be much happier just the opposite way. Quite as ego isn't my survival. Survival was the top value for her. Out and watch it at the bottom. I was that and also being smoking more than I want. Then I went out to the West Coast Kennedy assassination. Speaker 2 So was eris interfering with you before you were interfering with eris? Speaker 1 No, not in the least. Speaker 2 Okay, so as soon as you became aware of eris discordian, did you become a discordian? Right then and there? Speaker 1 I was the co founder of the Discordian Society. Well, the discordianism was something that started in a high school, though we're talking now about years later. I didn't regard it as serious thought at the time. Greg has added some very philosophical stuff that makes it more profound than it would be otherwise. After I got out of the service and become this raving right winger, greg and I became fast friends and organized the Historian Society. disorganized the Historian Society at that point was no place to be in whittier very much a few hundred and 18. And we were hanging out of bowling alleys for that reason. It was 24 hours bowling alleys, and one night we were walking down weird boulevard. Police stuff told us that you're guilty of vagueness grace's agency. I live here. And he says, yeah, that's making a difference. You're out of odd and usual hours. Crop spoke away. I turned to Greg, I said, let's go somewhere else. Either San Francisco or New Orleans. And I said, let's go to New Orleans, farther Away from woody. I'd been very admiring of the Hindu religion some years back and had thought once in a while it was too bad I couldn't believe in that. Speaker 1 All this other stuff too. And suddenly the what the LSD says to me is that the hindus were right. So that's what happened to me. I I was now sort of psychedelic Hindu and at the same time I was growing farther with culture. I used to be far away from mine. I went out to California while I was in political agreement with people that ran innovator. Most of them are really all reason and no rhyme. They just completely utilitarian. The office was very kind of ugly looking. I began to drift away from them because of that. I wound up about not anyway, I sent him copy of the innovator and we got into an argument about the use of the anarchist by fender spinner, who was a monetary mutualist, which is the same very much in banking interest. There was an article by the defendant. Speaker 2 Robert anton will Was that your first contact with him? Speaker 1 No, he wrote a letter. I sent him an innovator, if you're interested in organized his own post office on a vet with an attorney. And I asked him also no government who would deliver the mail. So he organized the American Leather Mail Company making more deliveries today than the government was charging less for stamps and making a profit besides. And eventually they had to make it against you today. Speaker 2 What is your belief system today, leaving behind the things that you want? Speaker 1 Well, pretty much essentially what it was. After wilson's argument about schooner, he sent me a bunch of pamphlets about Snooter's economic ideas. And I look back and I said, you know, my problem with west wing anarchist is that they seem to talk like they're more interested in killing all the bankers and insurancemen and this that other thing than they are about overthrowing the government. And he wrote back and he says well actually that's not true. He says most left wing anarchists are interested in things like childbearing. I had other red summary as Neil that really caught my imagination. Speaker 2 Intellectual history here, but I would like. Speaker 1 To go to the present philosophy I held at that point after the arguments with Wilson. It's the philosophy I hold the present. Speaker 2 And how would you characterize it in terms of what you are now? Speaker 1 Well, it's got a lot of names, none of which are very appropriate. They call it decentralism, they call it individualist anarchism. So the grandmother of the counterculture was very much involved with her all her life. Yeah, when I met her, she was an old lady and she really was interested in all these young ideas, sexual communists and things of that sort. There was a book called The inherit Experiment. She wanted me a copy of it. She was in Tampa for a while, the rough station. So we went over the nearest bookstore right there in downtown Tampa and she says. A little old lady says to yell behind the counter you have a book called The Heritage Experiment and what kind of book is it? A sex book? I'm afraid we don't carry that kind of book here. Those are the only copy on the shelf and triumphantly purchased. Speaker 2 It's a novel. But at this point I'm just trying to kind of encapsulate where you are now and what you stand for. Speaker 1 Well the only ways I've changed is that from my mormon past I kind of had to tacit assumption that whatever your philosophy was had to go about making converts all the time. I would avoid calling myself an anarchist these days simply because hag bart chilean the hero of the illuminati I found particularly admirable over again I would have done his way because he managed to weaken the government and made a living smuggling and he didn't sacrifice himself at all. Speaker 2 Is he like your role model or something you said? Speaker 1 Yeah, I was talking about the role model if I had it to do over again. But it's like basically you don't push too much the fact that you're anarchist. You don't throw yourself on the barricade. You don't throw yourself on the barricade. Speaker 2 Have you accomplished anything? Speaker 1 I accomplished practically everything. I wanted to hunger. Speaker 2 You wanted to become a rider? Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Have you lived the life of a writer? Speaker 1 Pretty much so, but not with much success on the economic end of it. Speaker 2 So you couldn't say you've made a living as a writer a couple of. Speaker 1 Times I made a living as a writer pornography for about a year. Speaker 2 What's the connection now between that and crowley? Okay, so are you suggesting that you were infested with these chicken flavors and that this might have something to do with. Speaker 1 Kind of hard to believe. One thing about we so called paranoid paranoids and professional intelligence. Speaker 2 I written a story about you later you called me up. Speaker 1 In the booking. Speaker 2 To the record here you sent Christmas and up to New Years together there. You were struggling with your house at the time at that point I wrote the story. You got mad at me. Speaker 1 You said that for example that I wanted to leave the door one night where I was jumping up and down to like cracking system. Speaker 2 You'Re like well I'm dying. Speaker 1 At some point I didn't realize my. Speaker 2 Dealing. Speaker 1 At some point. Speaker 2 What about the fleet tell me about. Speaker 1 Officer I'm going to die all kinds of parasites. I got six type leaves. Where they go after that? anybody's guess, I guess. I don't think it fits with the skin I see him burrell through pepper and stuff like that. Speaker 2 What did you say? Speaker 1 About what? Speaker 2 About the parasite. Speaker 1 I got up that morning and I had not been the dialysis Speaker 1 and he said look this is really constituted emergency match with him or something like that because in finally I think we drove off and got down to the emergency room and the emergency room. Speaker 1 I had no access to other doctors in my parents with him. My whole hope of getting any medical attention less than the risk of him he was not really interested in hearing the evidence. Speaker 2 Right. Speaker 1 And so it was very difficult. Speaker 2 He's a nephrologist, right? Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Okay. That's your primary diagnostic. Right. Speaker 1 And anyway, at some point, I had friends who didn't come out of metal hospital. I don't want something to call me. Look at my which guy goes in prescription one day. He said, sometimes if you hear and find out what they are, Speaker 1 examinations on my diary, my wife, Speaker 1 it like that I could do about cleaning house. Speaker 2 Basically, you got a serious illness revenue, but you don't really suffer from that as much as you're suffering from these parasites. Speaker 1 But I certainly find out it's Speaker 1 and I just don't see how I'm going to be able to write what they could have done in April 1. First thing I'm talking about, they could have put me in a hospital somewhere. Speaker 2 The effect of the physical problems that you have, they have an effect on your attitude. Speaker 2 This is my favorite question. Comment on a very few government law.