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+UNBELIEF “H 
+
+
+LISM OF 
+enry Flynt 
+
+
+If we are going to talk about enlightenment and deliverance, 1 do not see that 
+enlightenment and deliverance can come from anything as straightforward as an 
+individualistic search for happiness, or a mental hygiene of happiness. To me, the 
+life ] have now, which unfolds through ongoing interaction with other people —and 
+within this definite culture — is the arena that matters. In other words, | am located 
+in a shared basis of life. To me this circumstance is of outstanding importance. 
+While the medium of thought, the capabilities, the skills which are possible for me 
+are interior to me, at the same time they engage me with other people in cons- 
+ciousness—and | must regard other people as their source in most cases. (In other 
+words, | do not invent the English language, etc.) My consciousness and my 
+capabilities are, by and large, a fragment of a culture. The most worthy capabilities 
+in the culture become possible capabilities of mine. The most profound dilemmas 
+or failures in the culture, in the interpersonal arena, become my personal dilemmas. 
+
+
+What I have just said is not the same as the idolatry of “society.” I do not accept 
+the sociologists’ notion of reality, or conformism as a goal, or the obligation to pay 
+homage to societal abstractions like The Nation. Indeed, one of our culture's 
+extreme dilemmas and failures is its idolatry of society, an idolatry which aggres- 
+sively underestimates and devalues both the scope of the self and also the interper- 
+sonal arena. One of the most far-reaching questions posed by our contemporary 
+era is whether inter-subjectivity (community) will evolve beyond “society” as it is 
+defined by sociology (a sort of statistical mechanics applied to bodies). Here is an 
+outstanding reason why I do not see how enlightenment and deliverance can come 
+from an individualistic hygiene of happiness. The modalities necessary for enlight- 
+enment are novel and uncommon; and they are outside the scope of the ordinary 
+person's struggle for happiness in everyday existence. The necessary modalities 
+have to be achieved by dealing with dilemmas which arise from the culture as a 
+totality: enlightenment requires a “rotation” (transformation) of the entire culture. 
+Life is worthless unless I can inject whatever personal vision | have into the 
+ostensible, interpersonal arena, and seek to influence that arena so that it becomes 
+conducive to my sincerity and concern. 
+
+
+In order to express whatever sincerity and concern | have in the ostensible, 
+interpersonal arena, I must engage with the ostensible world; | must incur the risk 
+of realized choices; and I must “grant other people's right to exist.” 
+
+
+Whiekh 
+
+
+What I seek is a transformation of the ostensible world and of the shared basis of life. 
+This is to be accomplished on the basis of two enterprises which will eventually be 
+fused: a theory of palpable interrelations of the entirety of immediate constituents 
+of “my world” called “the personhood theory”; and a new instrumental modality 
+called “meta-technology.” In this introduction, I will focus on meta-technology 
+without bringing in the dimensions added to it by the personhood theory — largely 
+because the latter is as yet tentative. But I have another reason as well for under- 
+lining the contribution of meta-technology. There can be no genuine transformation 
+of the shared basis of life as long as the community's technological means is restricted to the 
+material technology we know today. The instrumental modality must come to embody the 
+takeover of technology by the psyche, by personhood. There is no genuine transformation 
+of the shared basis of life unless instrumental efficacy is at stake in that transformation, 
+unless the challenge to the prevailing basis of life is carried into the domain of material 
+technology. 
+
+As of now, I have assembled many meta-technological elements or procedures. 
+These elements, however, are isolated and limited. What | have accomplished is 
+analogous to Becquerel's discovery that uranium fogs photographic film, My pro- 
+cedures are effective as curiosities. But they will not be any more than curiosities 
+until they are subjected to an entire phase of extension and interconnection —an 
+undertaking which requires collaborative effort on a wide scale. 
+
+On the other hand, the analogy to Becquerel is misleading in that a meta- 
+technological procedure is of an entirely different species from Becquerel’s dis- 
+covery. Radioactivity occurs in the exterior realm of things (objectivities): it is an 
+effect of a thing on another thing. But generally speaking, a meta-technological 
+procedure is based not on a relation between things, but on an interdependency 
+between subjectivity and things. 
+
+Because I am located in a shared basis of life, a culture, that culture is of 
+overwhelming importance both as a source of possible capabilities and as a source 
+of dilemmas and limitations. To respond to this state of affairs, the meta-technology 
+must accumulate information which is of more than personal significance. It must 
+address dilemmas which are shared and which are culture-wide. That is why | 
+investigate mathematics, “real-world” logic, etc. It is also why my interest in 
+dreamed experience relates to a proposal to modify the shared basis of life — rather 
+than to the familiar purposes of divination and psychiatry. 
+
+I disregard all claims of sorcery or miraculous feats which inherently come as 
+reports by a second person about what a third person did (tall tales, fish stories, 
+legends). lam not interested in miracles which are always performed by somebody 
+else somewhere else. Indeed, my objections to occultism go much further than this. 
+But the principle which I want to emphasize now is that every meta-technological 
+procedure is required to be formulated as an instruction to be carried out first-hand. 
+
+Below | will explain that a starting-point of meta-technology is an adver- 
+sary attitude towards credulity. One aspect of this phased unravelling of credulity 
+is a critical examination of claims of meaningfulness for reportage which intrinsically 
+precludes first-hand testing. 
+
+
+Weve ever 
+
+
+113 
+
+
+114 
+
+
+Whar then is my attitude to the immediate, overt, ostensible world? I have little 
+use for the doctrine that the ostensible world is a sham which conceals another, 
+perfect world behind it—a perfect world which can only be known by hypothesis. 
+In other words, I do not treat the ostensible world as a facade for something lying 
+behind it, as a front for another world which is unperceivable. And [ have little use 
+for the notion of a perfect world which is hypothetical and imaginary. This present 
+life, which unfolds through ongoing interaction with other people, and w ithin this definite 
+culture, is my arena of concern. Imaginary lives and gratification in fantasy are unim- 
+portant to me. | accept the ostensible world as the arena of my concern, and as one of the 
+raw materials of enlightenment and deliverance. 
+
+The attitude I have just expressed does not imply that 1 admire whatever 
+ostensible world we inherit. Quite the opposite. Precisely because the ostensible world 
+matters to me, the arrival of enlightenment or deliverance has ta be demonstrated by a 
+transformation of the ostensible world and by a transformation of the shared basis of life. 
+Further, while I do not view the ostensible world as an illusion standing between 
+me and some perfect world which must be known by hypothesis, there is a sense in 
+which I view the ostensible world as a delusion. It is a delusion in that the very 
+perceptions which characterize it are palpably affected and sustained by emotions 
+of anticipation, by emotional dependence on other people, by morale, by esteem, 
+by knowing self-deception, etc etc. Everyday existence is the hallucination produced 
+by the so-called socialization process. Morale, esteem, etc. are co-determinate with 
+“perception.” 
+
+Thus, again, the arrival of enlightenment or deliverance has to be demonstrated 
+by a transformation of the ostensible world and of the shared basis of life. But what 
+| propose is not to strip off the ostensible world to reveal a unique perfect world 
+behind it. Rather, | want the ability to consciously “mutate” or plasticize the 
+ostensible world itself. 
+
+
+Yevevew ye 
+
+
+Inasmuch as I demand that enlightenment and deliverance should be evinced 
+by transformation of the ostensible world, | am a kind of secular revolutionary. 
+
+To me, the means of enlightenment and deliverance must begin with an adver- 
+sary attitude toward credulity and toward phenomena whose existence is solely a 
+product of credulity. In the Seventies, there was a rash of novels in the U.S. about 
+demonic possession. The protagonists in these novels were always Catholics. The 
+novelists knew that Catholics were protagonists who could plausibly be liable to 
+visitations by demons. If you do not want to see demons in your living room, 
+all you have to do to escape them is to stay outside the subculture that believes 
+in them. 
+
+The lesson of this example, properly understood, is the starting point of enlight- 
+enment and deliverance for me. If it is obvious that a phenomenon can be 
+abolished by unbelief, then the “reality” of that phenomenon is of a very low order. 
+The phenomenon has only the reality of chimera or fantasy. (On the other hand, it 
+is obvious that a lor of people enjoy their chimeras, and do not want to escape 
+everything that can be abolished by unbelief.) | make it a principle to disregard 
+phenomena whose existence depends so obviously on credulity. The attitude 
+
+
+which is encouraged by all kinds of superstition and propaganda is “How many lies 
+can | (manage to) believe?" The question which | always ask is "How much of what 
+I am expected to believe is a lie?" 
+
+On the other hand, the tssue of whether the existence of a phenomenon is 
+a product of cretlulity is not necessarily straightforward. In the first place, we have to 
+distinguish between getting rid of phenomena by unbelief and getting rid of them by 
+suppression or censorship. | often encounter situations in which scientists refuse the 
+opportunity to experience an anomalous phenomenon. Nobody denies that the 
+phenomenon is “real,” that is, accessible at first hand. The phenomenon is disre- 
+garded or suppressed because it is a nuisance, because it conflicts with the scien- 
+tist’s ideology. 
+
+In the same vein, I am not asking anybody to deny his or her own experience just 
+because it is abnormal, anomalous, or singular. But | am asking that such exper- 
+iences not be misrepresented and inflated through knowing self-deception — 
+especially in reporting them to others. | have long speculated that reports of 
+so-called astral projection etc. might have an experiential basis in hypnagogic 
+hallucinations etc. Unfortunately, the sort of person who relishes reporting such 
+episodes is also prone to inflate them via culturally supplied hyperbole. Reports of 
+abnormal experiences could have serious uses if the reportage did not surround the 
+experiences with chimerical objectivities, and if it took a painstakingly critical 
+attitude toward the “ontological” assumptions built into descriptive language. 
+
+Another consideration is that a thorough and ruthless effort to repudiate all pheno- 
+mena whose existence depends on credulity will begin to undermine phenomena which 
+our culture defines as legitimate and plausible. Unbelief does not just dissolve supersti- 
+tions and chimeras; it begins to affect phenomena which rational authority defines as 
+valid. At this point rational authority has to step in and disparage unbelief as a 
+social blunder. Here the role of community intimidation in sustaining the osten- 
+sible world comes to the surface. But I do not shrink from this consequence of 
+unbelief. Indeed, the radicalism of unbelief is a basis of my ability to obtain results which 
+are novel and astonishing relative to the established culture. 
+
+
+Yerevan de 
+
+
+Let me give some examples of meta-technological investigations: 
+
+A priori neurocybernetics! deals most directly with interdependencies between 
+awareness and objectivity. As one example, it uses perceptually multistable fig- 
+ures? as logical notations. The result is to establish awareness-objectivity inter- 
+dependencies in language which are tangible and inescapable and can be analyzed 
+and potentiated. The technique can be applied to break the framework of scientific 
+objectivism in many ways. As another example, | note that our “perception of 
+objects” is actually a mental collation of visual and tactile apparitions. There are 
+many cases in which the normal intersensory correlations are disrupted (the per- 
+
+
+1 Neurocybernetics is an existing branch of neurophysiology which seeks to explain thought by investigating the brain 
+as a “bionic computer.” 
+
+
+2-eg the Necker Cube. 
+
+
+115 
+
+
+116 
+
+
+ceptual illusions). If we take the illusions as a paradigm and reinterpret “normal” 
+phenomena in accord with that paradigm we are in a different reality, disjoined 
+along the sight-touch frontier. Bode's Law that two material bodies cannot occupy 
+the same position in space at the same time ceases to be usable, because the 
+determination of what is a material bady is seen to involve a vicious circle. 
+
+The evaluational processing of experience studies, as one example, the circumstance 
+that different levels of reality are attributed to waking experience and dreamed 
+experience even though both are equally vivid, equally palpable. What is at issue 
+here is the fabrication of an “impersonal order of nature”; the inter-subjective 
+character of reality; and the choice of rules for testing the objectivity of phenomena. 
+Again, once these elements are understood consciously, they can be consciously 
+altered. 
+
+The logic of contradictions is a wide-ranging, umbrella discipline. The unifying 
+theme of the discipline is the recognition that inconsistent conceptualizations, sa 
+far from being vacuous mistakes which can be eliminated from thought, are 
+pervasive and inescapable in thought as we know it. Conscious control of this state 
+of affairs is an extremely powerful achievement. The investigation begins with the 
+interdependency between traditional logic and perceptual habits in the real-world 
+logic of consistency. It then considers perceptions or events which are faithfully 
+described by inconsistent descriptions, such as illusions and dreams. I characterize 
+these apparitions as contradictory because that is the characterization given them 
+by shared language and paradigmatic real-world logic —as all the perceptual psy- 
+chology textbooks agree. Then, | study contradictions which are cognitively im- 
+plicit in our most authoritative or obligatory propositional thought. (Paradoxes of 
+common sense; the meta-theoretic inconsistency of arithmetic and set theory.) 
+Finally, I study how the communal milieu and its influence on esteem enables 
+people to assent to openly inconsistent doctrine. (Mathematics’ co-optation of its 
+own inconsistencies; etc.) This research yields a very wide-ranging capacity to 
+produce anomalies or uncanny world-states. 
+
+My recent investigations into personhood have shown that meta-technology can 
+be significantly widened and deepened by studying not only linkages of perception 
+and descriptive language, but their co-determination by morale, esteem, ete. 
+Studying the entire “vertical” organization of self or self-image could result in the 
+realm of perception being transformed. 
+
+
+Vee Het 
+
+
+Our civilization has long been characterized by the way it molds human faculties 
+to produce a cleavage between scientific functioning, on the one hand, and poetic, 
+emotional “human” functioning on the other. Meta-technology is beyond this 
+
+
+cleavage of faculties. Also, it is worth repeating that meta-technology does not 
+
+
+3 An example of an intemensory discorrelation ix Aristotle's tactile Husian: wuch the tips of crossed forefinger 
+and middle finger at the left hand te a projecting dowel while also looking at the dowel. You see ane dowel and feel 
+two The perceptions the wo fingersare notanly disjained. they are inverted The subjectaririhures tithe index finger 
+what ts touched by the middle finger and tuce versa, as cin be shown by applying two distinct stimult ns the finger - 
+a point and a ball, for example 
+
+Even better: try the experiment first with eves claved, and then open the eyes. Sight captures ouch, and the fingers 
+are switvhed withoutany motion taking place. (Adapted from Merleau-Ponry, The Phenamenalagy of Perception, pg. 105.4 
+
+
+consist of the sort of magic tricks attributed to pre-scientific religious figures. What 
+is a religious miracle like changing water into wine? It is — purportedly —an object- 
+ively consequential manipulation of the thing-world, a type of cause-and-effect 
+technology. It takes place “out there,” replacing a thing with another thing. 
+
+Meta-technology does not appear as hearsay; and it does not make any special 
+appeal to credulity. Rather the contrary. Its primitive procedures are given as 
+instructions to be carried out at first-hand. Presupposing a conventionally indoc- 
+trinated individual, it achieves anomalies by a decrease of the conventional level of 
+credulity. It is not centered on thing-to-thing relationships or causation “out there.” 
+It is centered on the interdependencies between subjectivity (awareness, self- 
+image) and things. 
+
+In addition, there is a third constituent important enough to be mentioned 
+separately: the communal milieu, and especially its influence on esteem—as when 
+intimidation by community authorities maintains the legitimacy of ridiculous 
+beliefs. It is at the juncture I have just sketched that “the world” is synthesized, that 
+the determination of reality occurs. Meta-technology attacks the credulities which are 
+elements of this juncture. It works with the linkages among ‘‘perception,” descriptive 
+language, and abstract cognition (logic, mathematics.) Currently | am extending the 
+research to include linkages to personhood —the high integrative level, the vertical" 
+organization of self or self-image. 
+
+There is a big gap between the primitive meta-technological procedures which I 
+have already formulated, and the communally implemented, culturally imple- 
+mented meta-technology which | envision. The primitive procedures can be 
+carried out by an isolated individual (and yield a sort of insight of sensibility); butat 
+that level they are, in a sense, only curiosities. The whole point is that meta-technology 
+acts on the cultural determination of reality as such. Unlike a miracle or magic trick, 
+which wants to remain a one-shot event in an otherwise lawful everyday world, meta- 
+technology must be extended through a community and a culture to realize its promise. It 
+is not a one-shot event bura “rotation” of an entire culture. 
+
+
+What is more, to reach its full potential, meta-technology will probably have to be 
+tied into existing natural science. But meta-technology would give a shock to 
+natural science which must not be underestimated. Natural science would be con- 
+ceptually shattered, and reorganized so drastically as to become unrecognizable. 
+
+
+vane 
+
+
+If meta-technology were implemented at the level of an entire community, 
+that community would have the power to consciously modulate what is now 
+thought of as the objective world. To speak of walking through walls would not be a 
+mere joke, Both the physical universe and mental acts as its antithesis would 
+disappear, in the sense of becoming inapplicable concepts. It would be possible to 
+achieve sustained, composed uncanniness, to live in a state of consciously modu- 
+lated enchantment. In this regard, the impulse underlying meta-technolgy is an 
+impulse toward an ecstatic form of life. (It must be understood, however, that the 
+rational mentality produced by modern Western civilization might experience the 
+enchanted community as a nightmare.) 
+
+
+117 
+
+
+118 
+
+
+When meta-technology shifts the focus from the thing-world to the interdepen- 
+dencies between subjectivity and things, it leads us to our whole humanness. It 
+carries out a takeover of technology by the psyche or by personhood. For a 
+community to attain a consciously modulated uncanniness would tend toward an 
+ecstatic form of life —an achievement which the prevailing culture would classify as 
+esthetic or spiritual, not scientific. That is what must be conveyed: acceding to 
+one’s whole humanness is neither science nor poetry because it is beyond both. 
+
+
+Postscript: The foregoing is not meant to promise a salvation which is blind 
+to economics and politics. The present article is limited to giving a few rudiments 
+of the meta-technology: my proposed extension or replacement for the physical 
+and exact sciences. My views on the social context are at least as unusual as my 
+views on science and form an entire line of argument in their own right. The 
+transformation I speak of would clearly be in conflict with the capitalist formation. 
+On the other hand, I hold that historical experience has obsolesced Marx's original 
+timetable and game plan for the supersession of capitalism. 
+
+
+Readers seeking more information or exchange of ideas are invited to write the 
+author care of Ikon Magazine. 
+
+