RAW speaks good again.

So I started a new Robert Anton Wilson book & immediately found three paragraphs I never want to live w/o. He has a habit of putting some of th juiciest stuff in his introductions or prefaces. So here we go, from th preface to th 1987 edition (reprinted in th 2000 edition) of Sex, Drugs & Magick:

Mr. A has a headache and is irritable. Ms. B just passed her mathematics test and is happy. Mr. C is worried, irrationally, that the Communists are putting poison in his food. Ms. D is worried, rationally, that she can't pay the rent. Mr. E is so involved in a medical research project showing good results that he elatedly thinks all disease is about to be abolished next Tuesday after lunch. Ms. F is so depressed by a year of losing battles for the rights of farm workers that she thinks the human condition is hopeless and the bad guys always win.

Any one-level theory of objective reality that ignores the separate reality-tunnels in which these people are living existentially has no validity in psychology, and, with a little analysis, it is obvious that no such one-level theory has any general validity in sociology either. To understand human behavior, we have to understand human evaluations (neuro-linguistic programs) and modern social scientists of all schools increasingly recognize that human evaluations (internal reality-tunnels) depend on both the external environment (setting) and the internal environment (neuro-linguistic programs).

You can easily kill yourself with negative mind-sets, by developing ulcers, heart problems, high blood pressure, etc., or by drunken driving, or simply by getting so depressed you jump in front of a train. Conversely, you can survive "objective reality" that would mentally or physically destroy others, if you are maintaining a positive mind-set.