Chapel Perilous
(ch 2 preamble) Robert Anton Wilson takes us on a crazy ride
Chapel Perilous, a concept introduced by Robert Anton Wilson in his philosophical framework, represents a psychological state of uncertainty and existential crisis.
In Wilson's philosophy, Chapel Perilous is a mental space where individuals grapple with conflicting belief systems, encountering the challenges of navigating through contradictory information and perspectives.
It is a symbolic place where one confronts the limitations of human perception and the subjective nature of reality. Wilson suggests that individuals passing through Chapel Perilous may experience a profound transformation in their worldview, ultimately leading to a more flexible and open-minded approach to understanding the complexities of existence. The concept is closely associated with Wilson's exploration of conspiracy theories, mysticism, and the ever-shifting nature of truth in the postmodern world.”
I was 27 years old and newly arrived at Sable lodge, in Harare when someone leant me a copy of RAW’s Cosmic trigger. I can honestly say it blew my mind at the time, I had not explored such a path before and this central idea of Chapel Perilous really took hold of me. I was ready to undertake a massive audit of my own inner belief systems, to challenge some of the perspectives and ideas drummed into me by my culture, education and life experience and be prepared to embrace a world view more deeply informed by reality, by new perspectives underpinned by the dawning realisation that somehow humanity has to reinvent itself and its systems of priorites and decision making if it is to continue to survive and flourish.
Once you allow yourself to challenge the fundamental ideas that underpin one’s own reality then you run the risk of everything that is familiar and comfortable completely unravelling, and this can be truly terrifying. We hold on to familiarity like a comfortable old rain coat and this might be at the root of our problems. I think this is why this terratory can indeed be seen as perilous, suddenly everything is at stake, one’s own sanity included.
Looking into the social, ecological and economic reality of our times is one of those processes that leads to an existential crisis. Which ever way you look there are fundamental limitations crowding in on us, be it top soil loss, energy depletion, limits to growth, deforestation, climate change, crippling levels of debts, a dysfunctional society, escalating war mongering and materialism, the acidification of the oceans, mass extinction of biodiveristy, loss of entire ecosystems, micro plastics permeating the very cells of our bodies, crumbling democratice institutions, crumbling infrastructure, rising despotism, populism, just where is one supposed to focus one’s attention? Our economic model does not work anymore, it is time for some new ideas.
Right now many of us are living under a bridge, and that bridge is not being maintained.
In recent decades as we have seen the rise of the right, we have also witnessed polarisation of opinions, the reduction of nuanced views to binary positions, an absolute failure to process the information, a fusing of fantasy and conspiracy with a selective interpretation of scientific data to reinforce pre-held convictions and world views.
Could we ever dare to let go of all of that? Dare we enter the chapel perilous — a necassery step to take challenge one’s own delusions and assumptions, RAW would argue.
Belief systems are maliable and can distort, especially in this hyper-connected world, where social media algorithms reinforce ideas through confirmation bias of our most deeply held beliefs irrespective of whether they are true or not. Once we sense some kind of conspiracy or withholding and manipulation of the truth we free ourselves to question everything, and to accuse those not signed-up into the same conspiracies as ourselves as being part of the problem. We cling to the familiar and reject everything else.
You can take the Covid pandemic as a powerful exmaple of this, and look how it divided us all. We were given an avalanche of new information, constantly changing and updating in real time as we were drip fed parts of a story that will never be fully explained to us. Different countries grabbed hold of different parts of this narrative to reinforce and justify their own actions or inactions. Those who did not like the dictats of the global health insitutions, challenged their very right to exisit, to be part of the conspiracy and part of the illusion.
Look how quickly we were divided into the vaxxers vs anti-vaxxers, maskers and anti-maskers, lock downers or free movement. Much of our own responses were of course informed by our own pre-judgements and biases and our relative trust of various institutions and governments. The UK leadership kept parroting how they were ‘following the science’ when they clearly were not, they were manipulating skant facts to create panic and a smokescreen for malpractice. The serious issues of how to ameliorate the spread of this disease, by distancing, by masks and such like became an ideological battle ground and a feeding frenzy for members of the elites fighting for PPE contracts, while society experienced a tribal split on the effeccacy of such measures. None of this bodes well for how we might handle future crises in this information age everything has become confusing.
Jumping over to the climate crisis as an issue, and everyone seems to have their individual scientific expert to justify and reinforce their pre-held world views. Politicians tell us they are leading the way, that our country is punching above it weight, while others lag behind, yet all of them surely must know, much deeper down that none of them are doing enough. That they simply lack the imagination to comprehend the scale of the challenges that we face and that facing up to these challenges destroys their own current world view, the same one that put them in charge and gave them a cushty job and an expense account. As we enter chapel perilous as a global society we are going to be confronted in so many new ways that everything we currently hold dear is going to be brought into question, this will be required of all of us I suspect, in order to really find the way forward and to confront the multiple demons embedded in our societies.
Who are the good guys? Who can we trust? How would we even know? What if the educational and cultural norms we have absorbed are distortions of the truth and are more propaganda and spin than fact, merely convenient ways for us to forgive ourselves our sins? Can there even be an absolute truth in this world of complexity, competing narratives and world views?
Enter permaculture…
This is another way of thinking, not a magic bullet by all means, but a direction, a path, one created and reinforced by personal experience, trial and error, boot strapping from the bottom up, while taking a bigger picture and longer term view.
To my mind only a frame work of thinking such as this can even begin to allow us to address these challenges outside of a competitive view, and way beyond a cultural bias. Permaculture is based on observation and extrapolation, water flows down hill, a universal truth. War air rises, organic matter decays aerobically to compost, sunlight is the income of the ecological world. We use these obersavations to shape an inform a design system that is harmonious and sympathetic to the natural sphere, that to which we are instrinsically connected.
Why might we pump water from the ground, when it falls from the sky?
Why do we use inorganic chemicals for fertiliser when it harms the bacteria, nematodes, fungae, mirco arthropods etc.. that create a natural fertility for free?
Where nature cycles components and materials endlessly, without waste, why do we build liniar systems that generate toxins, wates and residues that serve to damage the natural cycles we depend upon and that can’t be cycled.
Once you allow yourself to be challenged in fundamental ways, that is when you realise you are standing on the threshold of Chapel Perilous.
Our imperial legacy
Make no mistakes, this is what we have to flee from, this is the Western heritage that we must transcend. We are complicit in genocide and the benfactors of stolen lands and resources, slavery and colonialism is its own kind of facism, especially for the end user.
We have to face up to where we come from, and who we are, then we need to move to a new reality, letting go of the side of the pool, entering uncertainty, letting go of priviledge, you are entering chapel perilous, letting go of the foundational ideas that we have carried with us through our lives, only to realise they are fundamentally unsustainable.
I found this video very insightful of the imperial legacy and its on going toxicity in our abilities to deal the crises of the day, maybe this makes an effective starting point for our own cultural re-examination?
Can permaculture be that path to sanity and unity that we need, it is none prescriptive, but also describes universal and all encompassing patterns, there is much here we can all learn from. I would argue it can help us transcend partisan views and help us all find our individual paths to something more coherent and connected.
This is inspired writing. Metaphorically and in real terms. To divest ourselves of received knowledge and belief and to remove ourselves from entrenched systems does indeed require giant leaps of faith and letting go the side of the pool. And yes we must find a way to swim or stay afloat in the turbulent wake of all thing’s capital and necessary for optimum survival. Permaculture offers sound principles of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share that allow for us to seek new paradigms of existence and by taking others along with us instead of leaving them behind as present models do.
Yes ground up is one way but it’s a mighty beast we fight and I suppose the challenge is to find governments that are invested in the capital of people instead of the economics and capital of fiscal growth above all else. Recognising this is key.
The Steve Jones mighty think tank, thank you!