Since this book hit the streets and I’ve placed it in the hot little hands of friends and family alike, I have heard the question asked, “What is Quantum Humanism?” It’s an interesting little question, one I should have an answer for, really - but while the subtitle resonated with me from the moment I first heard it, I myself hardly really knew what it meant – even though I’m certain as one can be that it describes exactly what I’m doing.
I wish I’d made it up, but I didn’t – that honor belongs to Jamie Chase, who provided an illustration for the book and came up with it during a bitch session about my horrible layout skills on the porch of the Aztec one morning. I think the original sub-title was something lame like “the collected writings of” and someone thought that was just tacky and old-school and dumb but I was up to here with the project already and if he hadn’t said anything, it would probably still be like that.
But he did, and it isn’t, because the fact is that “Confessions of a Quantum Humanist” made total sense to me, even if I couldn’t explain it right then and there. I swear that Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary appeared in the sky above my head, chuckling, urging me to hold on to that one, and I figured that someday I’d have to explain it, so I might as well give it a shot now.
If you manage to read my book – go ahead, I’ve read it about five hundred times by now – you’ll find that more than a few of the pieces within concern themselves with magic or mysticism or just plain weird ideas, and even those pieces that aren’t strictly about magic rely on things like dreams, visions, and the occasional deus ex machina to get the characters (generally me) out of some weird situation or another. My work is like this because, well, my life is like this, and in reality, the work that you see is just the tip of the iceberg of the many weird trains of thought generally going on in my head at any given time. Magic – as a practice and even just as a nutty idea – seems like an extension of the kind of playful reality that I like to pretend I am living in – even in those times when I am not, such as during the past couple of years, when it seems as if every time I turn around, I find myself riding the twin tracks of a duality, living as both sinner and saint, virgin and whore, criminal and community activist.
Just six weeks ago, for example, I really needed to get the ball rolling on the promotion of this silly thing – at the time it seemed like I hadn’t really written a book at all but had instead created some kind of mammoth mail-art project, and true to form, my book has flown all over the place – but in order to get that ball rolling, it was time for a little ritual. I was feeling less than truly inventive, so I made no Wishpaper™ and fashioned no ritual objects – instead, I headed up to Museum Hill with a stated intention on a piece of paper, walked the Labyrinth solemnly, then drove over to My Favorite Spot™ for casting spells, stated my peace, burned the paper and watched the ball start to roll. And roll it did, and here we are.
Those pieces which aren’t strictly about magic are about perception – from the dot-com economy to what happened on 9-11 to the state of the state after 9-11 to Wishpaper™, Queer America, and the differences between madness and mysticism and what we as a culture should be doing about each of these. And perception lies at the heart of the quantum humanist equation, for when we talk about magic and we talk about humanism and we talk about physics, we’re talking about the position of the observer and his or her role as a participant in any given ritual or happenstance.
Familiar with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? Me neither, mostly, but it provides some interesting food for thought for those of us looking to see how we might make a meaningful impact on this thing we call reality. In order to observe particles, we have to bounce photons at them – we can’t just gaze at them from a quiet distance, but we have to engage them in order to see them. Thus, on the quantum level, the notion that we can see and observe anything without being involved with it on some level is a complete fallacy. Thus, on this minute level of the behavior of matter, there is NO SUCH THING as a passive observer – we are ALWAYS involved in the behavior of this matter whether we like it or not. As a result, whatever we choose to look at is something that we CHOOSE to engage, and what we end up seeing has a great deal more to do with what we might want to see than any kind of casual passing observance of the so-called “true nature” of reality.
Thus – how we see and what we think we might see goes a long way towards determining what we WILL ACTUALLY SEE. If I expect to see particles cozying up to wavicles (and I can assure you that I’ve never expected this before now) then chances are better than half that this might actually be what I end up seeing. Similarly, if I believe that an intention written on ball-point pen picked up at Walgreen’s written on plain paper and walked through a labyrinth and then stated and burned at an undisclosed location near one of the Dale Ball trails will actually result in a kick-ass book-release party at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, then this MAY BE the result that I actually see, (and, of course, as I write this, I am directing my intention towards that very result, but with my luck I’ll just end up signing books for a bunch of low-life wavicles…)
So I can hear you thinking to yourself – and the reason I can hear you thinking this is because you and I SHARE A HEAD. It’s true. We really do. Another nifty facet of the Quantum Reality is something called “Quantum Entanglement” which essentially states that any two particles that have interacted in space-time have essentially the same experiences when they are separated – this might explain why separated twins in disparate parts of the country both grow to love tall blondes, Pabst beer, and the Denver Broncos – and it certainly helps to explain why I can hear what you’re thinking. You’re thinking – “okay, I get the magic and quantum physics thing, but what has this got to do with humanism,” and I’ll tell ya, I’m getting there….
Humanism, as we classically understand it, is the belief in the rationality of human beings who possess within them both the capacity for truth and goodness. It is from classical humanist ideals that we derive our understanding of the notion of the sanctity of the individual person and all the rights that we have come to bestow upon that individual – the right of free speech and expression, the right to become and remain free, and the freedom of all to participate in the collectivist actions of the nation-state. It is from humanistic ideals that we saw the rise of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as well as the Age of Revolutions which led to the formation of the United States and other modern democracies. Humanism makes possible our ability to imagine all kinds of utopian ideals – from universal voting to universal education to the appearance of a social safety net, be it frayed as it is in our culture or robust as it might be in some European nations, all that we might say when we speak of the rights of the individual to speak, vote, participate in the nation, receive or not receive health care, education, a roof over our heads and a dignified means of death, we are speaking within the humanist tradition, and it falls upon us all, even today, to do what it takes to maintain, strengthen and expand those conditions as best we can.
So let’s get back to Heisenberg – if the observer invariably becomes the participant within even the rigid confines of the Scientific Method and its supposed detached role within the observation of events, then it becomes foolish to assume that any field of endeavor could possibly allow the observer to maintain anything close to a detached role. The arts and the social world become affected by this turn of events within science – notably, to me, in the world of Journalism, where New Journalism gained popular appeal for both readers and practitioners through its insistence that the notion of impartiality contained within traditional Journalism were a total fallacy and should be abandoned altogether -- with all works of so-called “non-fiction” written from the perspective of the “I,” in order to maintain the understanding that we were just seeing “someone’s Truth” and not a Universal Truth at all. In the musics of the mid 1970s we saw the rise of the theoretics contained within punk rock, which sought to smash the so-called “fourth wall” between performer and audience, and today, at the Burning Man Arts Festival in Nevada, one is continually reminded and perpetually warned that there can be “no spectators – only participants,” echoing not just the desire among Burning Man promoters for an all-inclusive event, but reminding everyone that Heisenberg and his Uncertainty is present in all fields of movement and action, whether on the sub-atomic level or right here in real-time.
Quantum Humanism means understanding that as participants in all observable events we are not on “one-side” or another. There is no left or right, no black or white, but only a thousand shades of grey and many possible solutions to any given problem. It is a world-view of compassion that recognizes that all solutions to our social issues lie within our ability to refuse to succumb to reactionary reactions in the way we approach one another. It is about the elimination of judgment among people and a continuing expansion of what it means to be human, not just as it concerns ourselves and our own immediate interests but also as it concerns others and theirs. It involves recognizing that the self and its limitations are our greatest enemy, and that the issues of others are only mirrors which only reflect our own short-comings and our ability to see ourselves as much greater than we actually are.
To summarize:
Quantum Humanism is about understanding that no argument has just two sides.
Quantum Humanism gives no credence to knee-jerk reactions or certainties about anything
Quantum Humanism doesn’t even recognize black & white, and knows for certain that there are far more than 256 shades of gray.
Quantum Humanism rejects the notion that you never have to say you’re sorry – chances are good that you have to say you’re sorry a lot, since your Truth and someone else’s Truth will probably never mesh – despite Quantum Entanglements.
Quantum Humanism knows that we don’t get a better world by having The Truth, but by knowing that everyone has a Truth.
Quantum Humanism is not easy – but you don’t need easy. You’re a Quantum Being, for chrissakes – and you can handle it. Life only gets better from here.
