Prometheus in the USA
A Psychedelic Essay on the Current American Circus
August 2025
There are two ways to begin this essay. One way is to tell you, solemnly, like an Old Testament prophet, that America is teetering on the edge of collapse, the empire is rotting, the barbarians are at the gate, etc., etc. Another way is to tell you that everything is perfectly fine, the market is humming, democracy is stable, and you can go back to TikTok videos of cats eating spaghetti. Both are lies, both are truths, both are maybe.
Robert Anton Wilson liked to remind us that “reality” is what you can get away with, and America has been getting away with quite a lot. But the circus tent is wobbling. In fact, it’s hard to tell anymore if the tent is collapsing or if the funhouse mirrors are just arranged at new angles. Either way, the clowns are running the show. (But then, weren’t they always?)
To make sense of the current U.S. political hallucination, let’s use the framework Wilson gave us in Prometheus Rising: the eight circuits of consciousness. Think of these as evolutionary “programs” wired into the nervous system—survival, emotional power, rational thought, social reality, and the higher “mystical” circuits. Wilson claimed these circuits govern both individuals and societies. So let’s run America itself through the circuits, as if Uncle Sam were on the psychiatrist’s couch, chewing peyote buttons, muttering about election cycles, and hearing voices from the Federal Reserve.
Circuit One: The Bio-Survival System
This is the baby circuit. It’s about security, safety, food, warmth. At the national level, it manifests as obsession with borders, walls, guns, pandemics, and whatever else makes us feel the species won’t be gobbled up by wolves. In the present U.S., the survival circuit is running hot. Everyone is scared: scared of viruses, scared of immigrants, scared of police, scared of climate change, scared of AI, scared of the wrong pronoun, scared of their neighbor’s yard sign.
The political theater exploits this primitive reflex. Candidates sell themselves as the Mommy or Daddy who will keep the wolves away. The Left says, “Daddy government will protect you with social programs and masks.” The Right says, “Daddy government will protect you with guns and walls.” Either way, the baby brain is soothed—or terrified into voting.
America, like a colicky infant, is stuck on Circuit One, screaming for a nipple. Unfortunately, the nipple is often a missile.
Circuit Two: The Emotional-Territorial System
Now we’re in dog world: growls, barks, alpha males. Modern politics is basically endless chest-thumping on this circuit. Red vs. Blue, Liberal vs. Conservative—it’s all territorial barking. Instead of urine on a lamppost, we have memes on Twitter.
Notice how debates never resolve anything; they’re not meant to. They’re ritual dominance contests. The point is to signal strength to the tribe. “Own the libs!” “Dunk on the MAGAs!” Everyone’s howling across the digital savannah.
Wilson wrote that most of human history has been dominated by this mammalian circuit. Looking at today’s headlines, you’d think we never left the jungle. America is a kennel of snarling dogs, each convinced the others are rabid.
Circuit Three: The Rational-Symbolic System
Here, in theory, reason rules. This is where logic, science, and planning are supposed to guide politics. In practice, the rational circuit in America is overworked, abused, and constantly overridden by the first two circuits.
Instead of evidence-based policy, we get “my facts vs. your facts.” Each tribe now lives in its own epistemological Disneyland. Data is weaponized. Algorithms are biased babysitters feeding us dopamine pellets. Scientists are alternately revered as high priests (climate change!) or despised as witches (vaccines!).
Wilson warned that language is a reality-tunnel builder. Whoever controls the words controls the world. Watch how political labels mutate: “woke,” “patriot,” “fascist,” “socialist.” Each word is a semantic landmine. The rational circuit becomes a smokescreen for tribal barking from Circuit Two and survival panic from Circuit One.
Circuit Four: The Socio-Sexual-Moral System
This circuit is where the “pack rules” live. Who belongs? Who’s an outcast? Who gets to breed, marry, lead? In America, this is the circuit most constantly agitated by culture wars.
Consider the never-ending battles over abortion, LGBTQ rights, family structures, and education. Each tribe insists its version of morality is sacred, eternal, absolute. Of course, these absolutes shift every few decades. Today’s heresy is tomorrow’s orthodoxy. But the nervous system, running its ancient program, clings desperately to rules of who’s inside the circle and who’s outside.
Politicians manipulate this by promising to defend the sacred pack structure. You can almost hear the howls: “Protect the children!” “Defend marriage!” “Stop the woke agenda!” “Stop the Christian theocracy!” It’s all Circuit Four tribal panic, dressed up in Sunday clothes.
Circuit Five: The Neurosomatic Circuit
Now things get interesting. This is the first “higher” circuit: bodily bliss, yoga, hedonism, psychedelic states, the consciousness of play rather than survival. In America, this circuit emerges in the booming industries of cannabis, psychedelics, wellness culture, Burning Man, ecstatic dance, biohacking.
But politics has barely touched this circuit, except in fights over legalization. Imagine if campaigns focused not on fear and dominance, but on pleasure and ecstasy. Imagine candidates promising better orgasms, more art, more joy. Instead, we get grim faces on C-SPAN.
The tragedy is that Circuit Five could heal a lot of the earlier circuits. But the system fears it. Blissful citizens don’t march in lockstep. They don’t buy fearmongering. They laugh at clowns in suits. So the American political machine keeps Circuit Five marginalized, or commodifies it into overpriced yoga mats.
Circuit Six: The Neuroelectric or Metaprogramming Circuit
Here the mind becomes aware of its own programming. You realize your “self” is just a model running on wetware. You can reprogram. At the national level, this means recognizing that “America” itself is a story, a set of symbols—programmable, mutable, not fixed in stone tablets.
But the average citizen rarely touches this circuit. Media, schools, and political rhetoric conspire to keep people trapped in their tunnels, believing their reality is the reality. To step into Circuit Six is to see the puppet strings—and maybe snip them.
A few cultural edges point this way: digital culture, hackers, Discord communities, postmodern philosophy, systems thinking. The awareness that we are living inside propaganda simulations (Fox, CNN, TikTok) is a flicker of Circuit Six. But again, the system fears it. If too many citizens realize they can rewrite the program, the rulers lose control of the console.
Circuit Seven: The Neurogenetic Circuit
This is the DNA consciousness, the sense of deep ancestry and evolutionary continuity. It manifests politically as appeals to heritage, tradition, bloodlines, and sometimes nationalism. “We are a chosen people.” “Our forefathers intended…”
In America, Circuit Seven is split. On the Right, it emerges as obsession with “Western civilization,” defending the Founding Fathers, protecting “real Americans.” On the Left, it takes form as reclaiming marginalized ancestries, indigenous rights, African-American memory, queer lineage. Both sides are tuning into genetic time-depth, but from different angles.
The risk here is fossilization: mistaking ancestral stories for immutable truth. DNA is information, but it mutates. The future needs fluidity, not embalming.
Circuit Eight: The Neuro-Atomic Circuit
Finally, the mystical circuit: cosmic consciousness, quantum awareness, unity with the All. In politics, this circuit is virtually absent—except in fringe mystic movements, UFO cults, New Age gatherings, and the occasional preacher who claims God told him to run for office.
Imagine if American politics operated from Circuit Eight: decisions made with awareness of planetary interconnectedness, the biosphere as self, humanity as one organism. Instead, the atomic circuit mostly shows up in the Pentagon’s fascination with actual nukes. A grotesque parody: instead of mystical unity, annihilation.
The Circus of Circuits
So where does that leave us? America today is a multi-circuit organism, but the lower circuits dominate. Fear (survival), anger (territorial), confused reason (symbolic), and moral panic (socio-sexual) run the show. The higher circuits—bliss, reprogramming, ancestral wisdom, cosmic unity—are sidelined.
Wilson might say we’re living in a neurological slum. Our nervous systems are hijacked daily by media shock, fear porn, and tribal drumbeats. The potential Prometheus in us—higher intelligence, cosmic consciousness—remains chained to the rock while eagles peck at our liver in the form of daily news headlines.
Maybe Logic in the Age of Madness
Wilson’s antidote was “maybe logic.” Not dogma, but agnosticism in the original sense: not-knowing, playful openness. In a world where every tribe screams “absolute truth,” maybe logic is revolutionary.
Consider the slogans: “America is doomed!” Maybe. “America is the greatest country!” Maybe. “Democracy is collapsing!” Maybe. “Democracy is being reborn!” Maybe.
By holding beliefs lightly, you can slip free of the lower circuits’ grip. You can reprogram yourself. You can look at the political carnival and laugh instead of despair. Laughter, Wilson said, is the sound of freedom.
Conspiracy as Psychedelic Theater
No Wilson-style essay would be complete without conspiracies. America today is drowning in them: QAnon, Deep State, Russian bots, stolen elections, shadowy billionaires. Are they true? Maybe. Are they false? Maybe. Are they psycho-dramas enacted by nervous systems trapped in fear and territorial growls? Very likely.
Wilson suggested that conspiracies are “poor man’s cosmology.” They give meaning to chaos. They reassure the nervous system that someone, somewhere, is in charge—even if it’s evil lizards. The alternative—that nobody’s driving the bus, that chaos is the driver—is too terrifying.
So we invent puppet-masters. But the deeper, more psychedelic view is that we are all puppet-masters and puppets, weaving the hallucination together.
The Trickster’s Closing Whisper
So where are we, really? America is both collapsing and mutating. Both doomed and reborn. Both a laughingstock and a laboratory. The nervous system of the nation is in flux.
If Wilson were here, he’d probably grin, light a joint, and say: “Remember, every perception is a gamble. Every map is a metaphor. Don’t take your reality-tunnel too seriously. And above all, don’t forget to laugh at the bastards.”
Because in the end, politics is a bad trip you can’t avoid, but you can dance through it. The clowns may be in charge, but you can always choose your own hallucination.
Maybe that’s the only real freedom left.
Comments
Post a Comment