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R. Michael Johnson

@r-michael-johnson.bsky.social
25 followers 14 following 31 posts

bookish hedonist, guitar player, anti-fascist. I ain't one of them AIs; I'm all natural, carbon-based, with entropy closing in fast. Please Advise? "All human evil comes from a single cause: man's inability to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
A review of Naomi Kanakia's What's So Great About The Great Books?, how Kanakia inspires me, and my own life reading in the Great Books. No AI used, or even contemplated being used.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Slumming With the Great Books
Naomi Kanakia’s recent book and my own perfunctory excursus on Great Books
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Counterculture/underground/anarchist writer Robert Anton Wilson found solace with Drug Warrior and pro-Vietnam Republican Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, over a harrowing tragedy they both shared.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
When Tragedy Bridges Politics
A micro-example: Robert Anton Wilson (anarchist) and Sen. Charles Percy (R-Illinois)
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
On very recent swath-wide AI gurus pronouncing probable AI-caused megadeaths, and how the 1% are trash and always were.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Smoke ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em?
Apocalypse Now Or: A Dreaded Philosophical Anthropology Writ Large
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I essay on my Walter Mitty-ish life around books, libraries, librarians, sex, intrigue, information, espionage and how we go into finite provinces of meaning all the time, and we should cultivate those "spaces," which are internal ones. I used books, memory and no AI. For writing?: I never will!
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Books, Librarians, Sex, Intrigue
A world I’ve made over decades OR: What a nutjob!
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Another ye olde fashioned no-AI used essay, another in my series about reading and thinking about History. This time as a bulwark against the ravages of advertising. Tell me what ya think!
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Thesis On History #8: Intellectual Self-Defense
One Adversary: Advertising. Immerse yourself in reading history to combat?
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
On how cannabis might enhance your own art appreciation. I give a first hand account, but Allen Ginsberg's is better than mine. Have you ever gotten baked and learned about art because of cannabis?
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Cannabis and Art Appreciation
One clear enhancement weed gives us: get high and go to a museum!
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Just dropped this non-AI essay on how we all "perform" in our day-to-day lives, and I try to link it with parties we remembered or heard about, sex, politics, science, performance art and "Happenings." I wonder if Diogenes the Cynic was the first performance artist, but I suspect it's way older.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
On Mundane "Reality", Wild Parties, Performance Art and "Happenings"
The blurring is to be expected and embraced. Hell: it was always a blur
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Here's yet another plea to read dense, deeply immersive literature and actual books. I try to argue why. You've been reading a lot of articles like this online over the past 12 years, haven't ya? I am not original here, at all. Tell me about your own difficult reads!
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
On the Decadent Pleasure of Reading Difficult Books
It's a way to understand our modern world, this reading in the dense and difficult
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
My lifelong evolution trying to find out what's going on with UFOs/aliens. Model Agnosticism, social science and cognitive dissonance theory, UFO cults, government disinformation agents as cottage industry since 1947: why? How trying to understand took me to Psy Ops, endogenous DMT, etc
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Swamp Gas, Ball Lightning, Anal Probes and the Stench of Disinformation
My ongoing, evolving relationship with UFOs and aliens, and "all that" OR: Sorry that "Disclosure Day" was such a drag, but I couldda told ya so!
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
On Robert Anton Wilson's mind-blowing 1962 trips: one on peyote, the other on belladonna. This latter trip is about as horrific a Bad Trip as you'll ever read about, but RAW used this bad trip throughout his writing career, so it was fruitful. ZERO AI. Not used in any way.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Robert Anton Wilson: Two Formative Drug Trips
RAW had two notable experiences before 1963, one that echoed down through his work for decades
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Olde timey essay on my life listening to the radio and observing the prosidic aspects of human speech and its effects on us. No AI used, much less even considered.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Radio Days
A life listening to radio and the erotics of disembodied voices
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
A review of Jos. Flatley's 2026 book The Occult Timothy Leary, which focuses on Leary's life, his influences & especially the influence of Crowley's tarot deck and corresponding symbols and knowledge between systems, whether they be psychological, sociological, philosophical, scientific, or occult.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Book Review: The Occult Timothy Leary
The imaginative fire of correspondences
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
What does "Osiris is a black god!" actually mean? I do a lot of reading, get sidetracked, get back on track, come up with a few things. You tell me. (ZERO AI used!)
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
"Osiris is a black god!"
Notes on feeling like an (increasingly?) weirdo reader
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Another olde-timey essay with AI not used, in any way. Sex and neologisms: demisexuals, sapiosexuals, young people and their dreams of Dark Academia. Etc. Do new words open up more thinking in "reality"?
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Sexy Neologisms
(And some not-so)
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
A review of Ian McEwan's 2025 novel: what we can know about history, why it matters, the values of AI, how we're in what might be called the Great Derangement due to relative inaction on global warming, the role of the Humanities, nostalgia, and falling in love with people from history.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Thesis On History #7
A review of Ian McEwan's What We Can Know (2025)
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Another non-AI essay on Sex (sacred sperm), Food (the hidden influence of the military), and Death (taphophobia: the fear of being buried alive).
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Sex, Food, Death (episode Gimel)
Sex: mystical semen; Food: influence of military; Death: taphophobia
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
What do we do when one of our favorite artists, writers, thinkers...does something egregious? An essay NOT using AI.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
"The Ezra Pound Problem"
And how Robert Anton Wilson and some other poets dealt with it
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
An open-firehose rant on what I see as a supremely lamentable cultural situation: the "Manosphere."
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Rant: On the "Masculinity Crisis"
And it is a rant, and overweening at that. CAUTION; This might not be "your thang"!
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Robert Anton Wilson and the trippy romance of mathematical ideas. He's but one of a number of eccentric intellectuals who sought to fire the popular imaginary with ideas emanating from mathematical thought, mostly starting in England in the 1870s. An olde-timey essay, with no goddamned AI used.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Robert Anton Wilson and The Laws of Form
Reflections on RAW and his background in Math and Engineering
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
On having been from a broken lower middle class home and having read a ton of "elite" social theory/theory about elites and class warfare and about the very rich: what do you do with all that? Keep your sense of humor, for one thing!
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Elite Theory: Call It What You Will
Sociology? Conspiracy Theory? Deep Politics? Realpolitick? Modern Machiavellian Practices? Parapolitics? Institutional Analysis? Becoming "Tough-Minded"?
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
A brief history of radical skepticism, from Lao-Tzu and Pyrrho to Montaigne to McLuhan and Robert Anton Wilson, whose "Model Agnosticism" can make you smarter, sexier, funnier, and less of a Cosmic Schmuck know-it-all. Maybe?
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Model Agnosticism: Precursors, Examples
Associated terms, etc.
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Robert Anton Wilson's Model Agnosticism: epistemology as a life-practice which can make you smarter, happier and more of your own type of mystic-critter. Also: it's sorta exhilarating, even when you're wrong. overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/model-agno...
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Model Agnosticism: Get Smarter and Happier
On the joys of epistemology and being wrong
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/dreamed-an... An olde-timey essay on dreams, dream research, the widespread denigration of dreams, how some Modernist writers used dreams, and humor around the activity and experience of dreams.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Dreamed Anything Good Lately?
Musing on dreams
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/intelligen... Will Levin's bio-electric model open up the materialist RNA-DNA paradigm, or shatter it altogether? Time will tell.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Intelligence: Michael Levin's General View
My intuition tells me this is the place. Or one of them, at least
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
The idea of "intelligence" being about the mammalian brain and it neural connections is really on its way out. Here's just one reason: overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/meditation...
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Meditation on Intelligence
Near-Brainless Cognition, etc. Something WEIRD is goin' on...
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
An old-"timey" essay on our desire to escape the strictures of space-time within the ambits of our daily lives. overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/escape-hat...
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Escape Hatch: Time
On wanting to get lost and separate ourselves from mundane, stupid "reality"
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/sexfooddea... On Jeffrey Epstein's "misreading" of Lolita; physiology of taste; death and the value of memento mori.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
Sex/Food/Death (episode: Beth)
Sex: Jeffrey Epstein’s “Misreading” of Lolita
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/raw-and-hi...
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
RAW and His Publishers: Part 3 (of 3)
New Falcon, Jeremy Tarcher, Hilaritas, and some disparate notes
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/raws-publi... 4000 words, with lots of digressions, on sombunall of Robert Anton Wilson's editors and publishers.
overweeninggeneralist.substack.com
RAW's Publishers, Part 2
Notes on And/Or, Krassner, Ginzburg, Roseman, and Fass. Part 3 will address Hyatt/New Falcon and a few loose ends
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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Yet another Thesis on History: why are we so damned miserable? Why hasn't this panned out? Why do so many wealthy people seem not to actually have creative...I dunno "lives"? Where are we going? I'm spitballin' and baffled. Someone enlighten me, por favor?
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