Weird Studies/Colin Wilson

25 Mar 2022 11:26 - 17 Jun 2023 08:29
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    • Interesting background on Wilson. I've been carting around both The Outsider and The Occult for decade without reading them, maybe now is the time to remedy that.
    • He was an autodidact that ran into some hostility from the British class system.
    • His ongoing project of "optimistic existentialism" – not sure what that means.
    • Story of how he started out living in a tent in Hampstead Heath and spending his days in the British Library autodidacting – and then eventually had a huge library. Must have made bank and bought a house sometime in between, but they didn't discuss that!
    • Faculty X – something which is supposed to explain various occult phenom. Not a sense so much as the ability to integrate sensation into wholes. The root of imagination, of being able to picture worlds other than the immediate surroundings.
    • Wilson is future-oriented rather than past-oriented, sees the occult as blending with science to produce the knowledge of the future. Mentions cybernetics as a start.
    • The life force, mana, chi. Banished by modernism but it shouldn't be, it points to something real.
    • The usual confusion about teleology and reductionism, but this time motivated by anti-natalists like Benatar(?) I think I agree about anti-natalists but for completely different reasons. This is JFM who is Catholic and really hates nihilism, both the Foucauldian and scientific-materialist varieties.
    • Also boxing, interesting – it's ugliness reflects that of life, that's why PF follows it. OK.
    • The universal agent?
    • Updates

    • Was Colin Wilson a fascist? Or was he fascist-adjacent? | Aeon Essays
      • This article was roundly debated on WS Discord. My verdict:
        • yes, palling around with Oswald Mosley is the very definition of fascist-adjacent. Flags raised.
        • but such things don't mark you for ultimate and total cancellation. There are much more problematic figures who get to be part of the discourse (Wagner, Heidegger, Lovecraft...).
      • Weird Studies has a bit of a fascism problem – not a big one, I am certainly not throwing around accusations – which is the same thing seen in other occultish circles. These people want to operate at "the limits of the thinkable". I love that slogan, or whatever it is. I vibe with it, want to join you in the exploration, even if my limits are not quite the same as yours.
      • BUT: fascism also exists "at the limit of the thinkable". That is part of its power, its willingness to embrace the forbidden. Like the Freudian unconscious, the more we repress it the stronger its influence. That means that one of the lures of The Weird is the same as the lure of fascism. Which in turn means, not that one must avoid The Weird, but that exploring it involves brushing up against dangerous and toxic ideas, and one must be prepared to defend against them. More broadly both are part of a more general romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism, and reactionary politics is often part of that.