J.M.R. Higgs > Quotes

“Multiple-model agnosticism, then, is a way out of postmodernism which doesn't lead into the belief that, out of all the billions of people in the world, you are the only one who really gets it and everyone else are idiots. The problem is, however, that our models are too damned convincing, and it is a struggle to remember that they are models and not reality. Hence much of the work of the Discordians - bar the stuff included purely for shits and giggles - is aimed at shocking people into realising the extent to which they confuse their models with the actuality. The 23 Enigma is a good case in point. Wilson was basically training his readers to notice 23s everywhere and, as any Discordian will tell you, he did this very well indeed. The point is, however, that there is nothing special about the number in itself. It is the fact that it has been singled out and had meaning applied to it, and that Discordians have been trained to recognise it, which is significant. Had it been the number 47, or 18, or 65, the effect would have been the same. Indeed, in his later years Wilson admitted that it would have been much better if he had trained his readers to spot quarters on the ground instead of number 23s. Of course, Multiple-model agnosticism also allows you to consider the model which states that the above paragraph is mistaken, and that the number 23 is significant. Many Discordians have explored this model at length. As I understand it, that model doesn't lead to anywhere pleasant, but the curious are encouraged to explore it for themselves to see if that's true. The reason that the 23 Enigma is useful is because it demonstrates the amount of information that our models filter out. In actuality, the coincidental and synchronistic appearances of the number 23 are matched by coincidental and synchronistic appearances of every other number, even though our models fail to react to these. They are just models, after all, and models are significantly less detailed than what they represent. Reality itself is ablaze with infinite connections: every particle in the cosmos affects every other particle. It's Too Much, it really is, and seeing reality in all its innate finery would be so overpowering that you'd be in no state to nip down the shops when you need a pint of milk.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“Whatever you believe imprisons you. Convictions create convicts.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, I Have America Surrounded: A Biography of Timothy Leary

“Rave emerged spontaneously, neither planned or designed. It was a genuine grass roots phenomenon, egalitarian and welcoming. Thousands danced in fields all through the night, out under the moon, in order to achieve a trance-like, ecstatic state. It was a form of communion and it was pagan as fuck. Needless to say, it couldn't last. The press and the government, appalled by such non-violent having-of-a-good-time, moved quickly to crush it. Ultimately, though, they weren't quick enough. Rave grew too big too quickly, and it attracted the attention of those who felt they could make money from such events. Once this happened and the superstar DJs and the superclubs arrived, the focus shifted from the raw crowd back to the event itself. Rave's spell was broken.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“As the old Russian joke goes, capitalism was the exploitation of man by man, whereas communism was the reverse.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“Others in the ancient world who denounced usury include Plato, Moses, Muhammad, Aristotle and Buddha. When a line-up like that is in agreement, it is perhaps worth thinking twice about our acceptance of it.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“The great German physicist Max Planck had been advised by his lecturer, the marvellously named Philipp von Jolly, not to pursue the study of physics because “almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.” Planck replied that he had no wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field better. Perhaps unaware of the old maxim that if you want to make God laugh you tell him your plans, he went on to become a founding father of quantum physics. Scientists”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“The art world assumed an air of polite remove from the activities of the K Foundation from then on in, and it soon became apparent that no suitable gallery was going to host their inaugural exhibition. This was called Money: A Major Body of Cash, and largely consisted of what money the pair still had from The KLF years nailed to things. The key piece was called Nailed To The Wall, and consisted of a million pounds in fifty pound notes nailed to a board. The reserve price for this was going to be half a million pounds. The purchaser could therefore double their money by simply taking it apart. If they hung it on the wall, however, the value of the notes would decrease over time, but the value of the art might well increase. The exhibition, then, raised many thorny issues about the relationship between art and money. Or at least it would have done, if a gallery had been found to put it on.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“The pre-Thatcher state had functioned on the understanding that there was such a thing as society. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic had tried to find a workable middle ground between the laissez-faire capitalism of the nineteenth century and the new state communism of Russia or China. They had had some success in this project, from President Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s to the establishment of the UK’s welfare state during Prime Minister Attlee’s postwar government. The results may not have been perfect, but they were better than the restricting homogeny of life in the communist East, or the poverty and inequality of Victorian Britain. They resulted in a stable society where democracy could flourish and the extremes of political totalitarianism were unable to gain a serious hold. What postwar youth culture was rebelling against may indeed have been dull, and boring, and square. It may well have been a terminal buzz kill. But politically and historically speaking, it really wasn’t the worst.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“and they had the suitcase with them. "Come on, we're going to do it now", said Drummond. Reid asked why. "There's just a time when you instinctively know it is right," Cauty replied. The plan had been to get up early on the morning of”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“Slackers were not well dressed, because there was no reason to dress smartly. Their uniform was old jeans, Converse trainers and warm, practical lumberjack shirts. They were not career-minded, for there was no reason to pursue the corporate dream. They were seen largely as apathetic, but it was an apathy born of a logical assessment of the options rather than innate laziness.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“The initial shooting that led to the conflict was itself a farce. The assassin in question was a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. He had given up in his attempt to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria following a failed grenade attack by Princip’s colleague, and gone to a café. It is often said that he got himself a sandwich, which would surely have been the most significant sandwich in history, but it seems more likely that he was standing outside the café without any lunch. By sheer coincidence the Archduke’s driver made a wrong turn into the same street and stalled the car in front of him. This gave a surprised Princip the opportunity to shoot Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Over 37 million people died in the fallout from that assassination.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“from that moment in June 1973 I decided to accept the total contradiction that everything from the Big Bang to the end of time is preordained in every sense and that we are totally free to do whatever the fuck we want.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“To fathom hell or soar angelic/Just take a pinch of psychedelic.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, I Have America Surrounded: A Biography of Timothy Leary

“American Christianity did not undergo the church-emptying declines of European Christianity. Its perspective was similar to that of Mother Teresa, who in 1988 said, “Why should we care about the Earth when our duty is to the poor and the sick among us? God will take care of the Earth.” Here God is the “big man” of the tribe who offers protection in return for service. Accepting that the climate could spiral into chaos is accepting that such protection does not exist. This makes working to prevent climate change ideologically problematic.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“Should a budding notion be subjected to his objective and critical mind, however, "all you learn are all its faults and weaknesses and the reasons why you should not be doing it." The unformed idea will be riddled with contradictions, and a critical eye will use these contradictions as a reason to kill the idea off. The liberation loophole, then, is giving yourself permission to accept those contradictions and to allow the idea to grow under its own logic, protected from the withering scorn of rationality.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“Greer recognised that the direction the sexual revolution was taking was not in the interests of women. “Sex must be rescued from the traffic between powerful and powerless, masterful and mastered, sexual and neutral, to become a form of communication between potent, gentle, tender people,” she wrote.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“Being included in a ceremony wasn’t easy, for it was only permitted to enquire about the mushrooms ‘when evening and darkness come and you are alone with a wise old man or woman whose confidence you have won, by the light of a candle held in the hand and talking in a whisper’. The mushrooms themselves had to be picked”
― J.M.R. Higgs, I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary

“The sorry plight of the upper class is something that is all too often ignored in the defence of the British monarchy.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Our Pet Queen: A New Perspective on Monarchy

“Nevertheless, all this is worth noting because there is another fiction that is important in Drummond and Cauty's story. This one is more significant, because this is the fiction that they became, taking on its title and performing their actions in its name. It is also the source of our whirlwind of synchronicities. We are talking, of course, about The Justified Ancients of Mummu. The question then becomes did Cauty and Drummond choose The JAMs, or did The JAMs choose Cauty and Drummond? A possible clue will come later, when we look at what the founding purpose of The Justified Ancients of Mummu actually was.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“The title came when Drummond turned to Cauty at a rave, intending to ask when the MDMA they had taken would kick in, but found himself phrasing the question in the words ‘What time is love?’ At which point, they both understood that it had started to work.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds

“If it makes it any easier, this author can assure you that there will be no other appearances in this story by giant invisible rabbit spirits.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“There was no such thing as a straight line until mathematicians invented one.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

“Most people can be relied on to humour the upper class in social situations but it is not always easy, especially when they start discussing their value system.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Our Pet Queen: A New Perspective on Monarchy

“I had lost my respect for rationality long ago. The intellect is not the tool for discerning the future, it never has been and it never will be. It ranks somewhere behind random guessing and answering every question with the statement 'It'll be fine.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, The Brandy of the Damned

“We are seeking a better sense of national identity. Not one that is imposed on us by the state, monarchy or military, but one which bubbles naturally out of the land - an identity that is welcoming, not insular; magical rather than boorish; creative rather than triumphant. It is out there, waiting for us, and if we head out of the front door and follow that road, we will find it. It is an identity fit for those who would live nowhere else in the world, but who wince at jingoism and flag-waving. It should not make anyone proud to be British; it should make them delighted to be British.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past

“There is no requirement for those affected by an idea to be aware of any of this, of course. When the writer and media critic Philip Sandifer writes that "David Whitaker, at once the most important figure in Doctor Who's development and the least understood, created a show that is genuinely magical and this influence cannot be erased from within the show," he does not mean that any of the hundreds of actors and writers who went on to work on the programme saw it in those terms. Or as Sandifer so clearly puts it, "I don't actually believe that the writers of Doctor Who were consciously designing a sentient metafiction to continually disrupt the social order through a systematic process of détournement. Except maybe David Whitaker." From Drummond and Cauty's perspective, the story of Doctor Who is irrelevant. All that was happening was that they were exploring their mental landscape, and they were fulfilling their duty as artists by doing so more deeply than normal people. This is a landscape with many unseen, unknown areas where who-knows-what might be found. The KLF explored further than most and, if we were to accept Moore's model, it would perhaps not be surprising that a fiction as complex as Doctor Who could encounter them in Ideaspace and, being at its lowest point and in dire need of help, use them for its own ends. For Moore, and other artists such as David Lynch who use similar models, the role of the artist is like that of a fisherman. It is their job to fish in the collective unconscious and use all their skill to best present their catch to an audience. Drummond and Cauty, on the other hand, appear to have been caught by the fish. Lacking any clear sense of what they were doing, they dived in as deeply as Moore and Lynch. They did not have a specific purpose for doing so. They just needed to make something happen - anything really, such is the path of chaos. "It was supposed to be a proper dance record, but we couldn't fit the four-four beat to it, so we ended up with the glitter beat, which was never really our intention but we had to go with it," Cauty has said. "It was like an out of control lorry, you know, you're just trying to steer it, and that track took itself over really, and did what it wanted to do. We were just watching." This lack of intention is significant, from a magical point of view. One of the most important aspects of magical practice is the will. Aleister Crowley defined magic as being changes in the world brought about by the exercise of the will, hence his maxim 'Do what thou Will shall be the whole of the Law.' The will or intention of a magical act is important because the magician opens himself up to all sorts of strange powers and influences and he must avoid being controlled by them. Drummond and Cauty were not exerting any control on the process, and so they made themselves vulnerable to the who-knows-whats that live out of sight in the depths of Ideaspace. For this reason, you could understand why Moore would think that Bill Drummond was “totally mad." All this only applies if you're prepared to accept the notion of magic, of course.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“We can tell this story without the help of the Devil, if it makes you more comfortable. Consider the story of the Greek Titan Prometheus. Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind. As a punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock and he had his liver eaten out by a giant eagle. Then the liver grew back, and the eagle feasted again. In this way Prometheus was tortured for eternity. All of which illustrates a profound truth, which is that Gods are bastards.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

“You cannot understand a man’s actions unless you understand his beliefs.”
― J.M.R. Higgs, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds