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No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels. The Outsider has been translated into over thirty languages (including Russian and Chinese) and never been out of print since publication day of 28 May 1956. Wilson wrote much of it in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and during this period was, for a time, living in a sleeping bag on Hampstead Heath. He continued to work on it at a furious pace and: Jung believed that alchemy is about the transmutation of of the mind and the discovery of the self. Inevitably, he saw the male and female elements of the prima materia -- the king and queen of alchemy -- as the animus and anima; this seemed to indicate the ( sic) alchemy is about psychological processes. If this were the end of it, The Outsider would still be a cogent existential analysis of the ‘world without values.’ But of course, Wilson moves beyond existentialism, and beyond Sartre and Camus. As far as ‘solutions’ to the ‘Outsider problem’ go, Sartre advocates authenticity and commitment, while Camus suggests a simple acceptance of absurdity of life, both of which are hardly satisfactory. The difference between them and Wilson is that their philosophies are based on the assumption that the vision of reality which normal human consciousness reveals to us is objective, that it tells us the truth about reality. However, Wilson senses that consciousness is a continuum rather than a static point (although he expresses this idea more clearly in the later books of the Outsider cycle). For him – as for William James – there are varieties of conscious states, some of which are more intense and expansive than others. Wilson doesn’t trust the existential vision of meaninglessness and indifference, because he is aware of the existence of higher states of consciousness in which this vision is transformed, where the ‘world without values’ becomes a radiant, meaningful and benevolent place. This is where the solution to the ‘Outsider problem’ lies: in gaining access to the world of meaning beyond the limited reality of normal consciousness. Jung fiercely resented the implication that he was a hypocritical, self-seeking Judas, a 'rat'. Yet there was just enough truth in it to strike home. He was undoubtedly a man who liked his own way, no matter what the cost to others.
And the central assertion of his philosophy is that this inner realm is the 'spiritual world' and that once man has learned to enter this realm, he realizes that it is not a mere imaginative reflection of the external world, but a world that possesses its own independent reality. The main distinction here is that the potential Superman (or Outsider) feels somehow incomplete and unfinished. He has a dynamic urge to develop, whereas ‘ordinary’ people are ‘static’ in the sense that they don’t feel this need for growth. Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious. A new six-part film documentary about the life and works of Colin Wilson was premiered during the third International Colin Wilson Conference in Nottingham, UK, on September 3, 2023.Nietzsche's great concept of Yea-saying gave him a notion of purpose that is seen as positive. Nietzsche, in short, was a religious mystic. As I read the book, I felt somehow that I was coming home, that a path was slowly forming in front of me. The next day, when I finished it, I felt like a different person. My image of myself had changed, and I knew that my life was going to change too, that that bleak period I’d been living through was drawing to a close. Normally man’s mind is composed only of a consciousness of his immediate needs, which is to say that this consciousness at any moment can be defined as ‘’his awareness of his own power to satisfy those needs.’’ He thinks in terms of what he intends to do in half an hour’s time, a day’s time, a month’s time an no more. He never asks himself: what are the ‘’limits’’ of my powers? In a sense, he is like a man who has a fortune is the bank, who never asks himself, How much money have I got, but only, Have I enough for a pound of cheese, a new tie, etc. Rather than a distinct human type, we’re dealing a new kind of psyche – or a new kind of consciousness – which is beginning to develop in more human beings, and which manifests itself in different people to a greater or lesser to degree. This new kind of consciousness is more intense and expansive than ordinary consciousness in that it includes a heightened perception of the is-ness and beauty of the world, a heightened sense of connection to other people, nature and the cosmos as a whole, and a sense of the meaning, harmony and ultimate spiritual essence of the universe. The ‘Outsiders’ (or ‘self-actualisers’) are simply people in whom this new kind of psyche is strongly developed. The dynamic urge for self-development these people feel is the impulse to allow this new consciousness to manifest itself. In many people, it is latent rather than fully formed, in the same way that the state of a butterfly is latent in a caterpillar. The Outsider’s struggle is to bring this latent consciousness to full fruition, and emerge as a higher ‘butterfly’ self.
Or consider the view that man is a stranger or alien in the world. On the conventional religious view one can understand roughly what is meant by this. Man’s soul, which is separable from his body, is either a fragmented part of the world-soul and must return to the One from which it descended, or, cast into the natural world, its supernatural end is reunion with God, its creator. But if an individual surrenders this view, and, like most of Mr. Wilson’s characters, repudiates the dogmas of immortality and resurrection, what home can he possibly conceive man to have other than the natural world of which he is a part, to be sure a distinctive part, but as dependent upon other existing things as the animals and stones in the field? This is what fascinates Shaw: this enormous force that ignores our human preferences, our logic and intellect. It fascinates him because to be suddenly gripped by it is to see that human beings are not the accidental products of a mechanical universe — that they are not 'alone'. As social animals, we live in a narrow but apparently logical world with a well-defined identity and position. But man is the satellite of a double-star; there is also an inner-world that seems to have a completely different set of laws from the rational universe. And in fact, if we judge this 'rational universe' by its own laws, we see that it is not self-complete and self-explanatory; space must end somewhere, time must have a stop; but the alternative propositions sound equally 'logical': space is infinite; time has neither beginning nor end. The answer to these paradoxes must be that the outer universe is not self-complete; it is only half a universe. The inner world is the other half. But at present we know very little about this inner world. It is only within the present century that its existence has been clearly recognized by psychology. Wilson then engages in some detailed case studies of artists who failed in this task and try to understand their weakness – which is either intellectual, of the body or of the emotions. The final chapter is Wilson's attempt at a "great synthesis" in which he justifies his belief that western philosophy is afflicted with a needless pessimistic fallacy. The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for truth.Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting – are achieved by men who are supremely alone. This is the evolutionary movement which has been – and still is, of course – creating Outsiders, and which they are contributing to. Quotes [ edit ] No art can be judged by purely aesthetic standards, although a painting or a piece of music may appear to give a purely aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic enjoyment is an intensification of the vital response, and this response forms the basis of all value judgements. The existentialist contends that all values are connected with the problems of human existence, the stature of man, the purpose of life. These values are inherent in all works of art, in addition to their aesthetic values, and are closely connected with them. What can characterize the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, or unreality. The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.
These experiences are not 'religious' in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not 'ineffable' in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. 'One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people'. The peak experience tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. 'For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience . . . The first sign that something was up came two days before publication, when an excited article in the Evening News heralded Wilson as "A Major Writer". The next day he was acclaimed by the two most important critics in the country - Philip Toynbee in the Observer and Cyril Connolly in the Sunday Times. "Luminously intelligent," declared an overjoyed Toynbee of Wilson's book. Connolly pronounced it to be "extraordinary", "one of the most remarkable first books I have read for a long time". When it appeared in the bookshops on Monday, it sold out by the end of the afternoon.
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There certainly is self division. The man who watches a woman undressing has the red eyes of an ape; yet the man who sees two young lovers, really alone for the first time, who brings out all the pathos, the tenderness and uncertainty when he tells about it, is no brute; he is very much human. And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the ape's desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape's appetite. The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be ‘balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be ‘possessed’ by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities. Leaning together and they woad read it with the same mild interest with which they read the rhymed advertisement for razor blades, wondering what on earth the manufacturers will be up to next. Some of them even carry identity cards -force of habit- that would tell you precisely who they are and where they live.