Was PKD just a paranoid schizophrenic, or actually onto something much deeper?
>>7377785
Elaborate, I haven't read any of his work but am interested in it.
What do you think about the book he was last working on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Owl_in_Daylight
>"The owl in daylight" is a phrase Dick heard on television. It means not to understand
What did he mean by this?
>>7377785
Why not both?
Srsly, his paranoia informed his work and makes it more compelling. IMHO.
Barbiturate Psychosis
>>7377914
>Dick viewed the novel as his Finnegans Wake.
>>7377785
*tips gnostikoi*
Philip K Dick accessed to his inner truth center, but his abuse of drugs and interference from evil entities that surround us at all times (hello, Game-Players of Titans anyone? we're surrounded by vugs 24/7) allowed them to fuck his consciousness up, but his maniacal impulse kept him working hard towards what would later become the Exegesis, much to the dismay of those evil ones.
>>7378077
>The Man in the High Tower
Kill yourself.
>>7377793
Philip K. Dick was a science fiction writer active from the 1950s to early 1980s.
Dick never made it especially big so got low rates for his work, to compensate for this he would produce a high volume of work leaving little time for editing or rewriting.
He took barbitutes to maintain this high rate of work
Dick also had at times a fragile mental state, suffering from agorophobia in high school, which combined with the pressure of limited income and family pressures and the effect of barbituates all worked together to create a series of psychotic breaks in the 1970s where he believed Aliens were communicating, the United States was the Roman Empire and Nixon its Ceaser, etc. He collected these ideas into a number of his later works like Valis.
A few works like The Man in the High Castle are good
But a lot of bad
Michael Moorcock once wrote a good review delving into all this:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/mar/15/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.philipkdick
He was just a paranoid schizophrenic egged on by weird synchronicty probably stemming from all his self fufilling prophecizing
I love PKD and also Robert Wilson but
>taking mysticism seriously
>ever
Inb4 butthurt /x/ yards call me a fedora for not thinking magick is just a force which hasn't been proven yet because nobody will take it seriously or some shit
>>7378142
Robert Wilson was a kek, and the gnostics are objectively right.
>>7378150
>gnostics are objectively right
I would really like to see some evidence of that. This is coming from a former Gnostic and mentally unstable person my friend. I relate and understand why people take PKD or RAW at face value but really they just had mental issues. Gnosticism is not any more sound than any other religion
>>7378175
Why are you pinning mysticism on Wilson? When I read Prometheus Rising, he didn't seem to be arguing that Gmosticism is the way, the truth and the light, but rather that it's an old, more interesting than it realized, proto-psychology whose roots we're starting to understand better.
>>7377785
"on to something"
>Implying anyone's had a new thought about the nature of reality in ten thousand years.
Goddamn kids.
>>7378254
Someone said RA Wilson was a Gnostic. Since he wrote a nonfiction work about mysticism, that's up for valid debate.
See you tomorrow.
Fag
>>7378062
this. i see so many hipsters writhing in paroxysms of self-involved admiration for PKD that they tend to gloss over his drug use aside from "he dabbled with LSD". he did SHIT-LOADS of speed, and it shows in his writing.
on top of that he was a robot.
anyone like pkd on audiobook?
i know lit looks down on audiobooking but i got all his novels on audio and have been going through them this year mostly during transit and while running errands
im really enjoying it. his prose is perfect for audiobook and he writes some very good stories
i read more literary stuff on my own time so the pulpier philip dick books make a good balance
>>7378039
it's becuase owls can't see in daylight, they don't 'understand' it. one of the possible plots for 'the owl in daylight' would have been about aliens that don't have sound-based communication, but they can see better than humans. they are confronted with music from earth, they don't get it, probably? a composer of scifi b-movie scores is involved in all of this somehow.
>>7378254
>I'm done with this retarded board. (That)
Now you can go back to reddit/ tumblr. One of those sites always say that, I see the pictures often.
>>7378272
someone said Ronald Reagan was an actor.
>>7378577
>aliens that don't have sound-based communication are confronted with music from earth
>a composer of scifi b-movie scores is involved in all of this somehow
lel, PKD, what a madman
>>7377785
Have you read Valis? Yes, he was schizophrenic. Though I admit, it made for a pretty great piece of fiction.
Antonio patriota!
>>7378254
Ive been saying the same thing, for 7 years senpai.
Depends on YOUR view of the world.
Most people disregard schizophrenics and people with other mental "diseases" and "disorders" simply because they are labelled such.
If you are willing to step over the boundary of what is "normal" or "sane" then read his works and decide for yourself.
>>7377785
Why not both? I'm serious. If he was onto something then how could it manifest as anything but schizophrenia? Which is a very ill defined term.
Jung analysed Joyce and his daughter who was schizophrenic and said afterwards that they were both sinking to the bottom of a river but he was diving and she was drowning.
My sister was diagnosed as schizophrenic and at her most intense she came to me and started telling me all this stuff about how she thought the world worked. She was never book-smart in the least, she'd been a very conventional and quite mundane person but the stuff she was saying was everything Dick was getting at, like all the roots of religion and metaphysics and she couldn't handle it. I couldn't tell her that I agreed with her and just tried to calm her down because she, like Dick in he end, was a person unequal to her revelations. I think sometimes that schizophrenia is literally a next developmental stage in evolution.
whether he was schizo or not he was fully aware of how insane he sounded.
There's this video of a speech he gave where he acknowledges that he knows that he could be insane and then goes on to talk dead-seriously about parallel realities. The camera pans around and a lot of the people in the crowd are trying not to laugh.
Idk maybe he was just completely batshit but his case sort of freaks me out.
>>7377785
The former.
>>7377785
If you have the chance you should read his exegisis. An edited one was published recently. I do think he was a headcase, but lucid and very compelling one.
>>7379904
>If you are willing to step over the boundary of what is "normal" or "sane"
then i would like to explain to you in great depth my theories of control and how Roman imperial hegemony was carried forward by the Anjevin Kings through to the modern age where it has reached its final expression in the fascist empires of Germany and America which is obvious to anyone in particular those who have received transmissions from orbiting alien satellites explaining their personal place in history and how the Iron Empire must be fought in order to maximize freedom for all humans in the future and why are you running away i haven't told you about how John The Baptist ties in with this officer no i was just explaining to this man about how no i am not on any medication that i choose to define as such can you please stop tasing me
>>7380764
>If he was onto something then how could it manifest as anything but schizophrenia?
if he was on to something then why is he the only one?
why do all these "border theorists" have different arguments, and why are they always the centerpiece of their particular conspiracies?
three words: Francis E Dec.
>>7378201
it's funny how both men had Alan Watts to thank in saving them from what OP calls "paranoid schizophrenic" world views
>>7377785
Drop the >just.
Then bit of both, I suspect.
>>7381144
I imagined the end of this like the the first scene of IJ.
