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Meta-Information
META-INFORMATION
Personal Power, Responsibility, & Freedom
By "AS"
August, 1983
"...at a grand committee, some days ago, this important discovery was made by a certain curious and refined observer; that sea-men have a custom when they met a whale, to fling him out an empty tub, by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. This parable was immediately mythologiz'd: The whale was interpreted to be Hobbe's 'leviathan,' which tosses and plays with all other schemes of religion and government, whereof a great many are hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation." - Jonathan Swift ('A Tale of a Tub: Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind')
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
My profound thanks to the many people, too numerous to mention individually, who have directly and indirectly assisted me in the development of meta-information, and in the preparation of this report. I am certain that you can benefit, in return, by applying some of the materials contained herein and by participation in the meta-information network.
A very special thank-you to all the distinguished authors whom I so freely quote in these pages. I regard us all as associates in the "great work for the universal improvement of humankind"; and, to my readers: I recommend that you purchase the books written by these authors and that you learn from them what you can...
PREFACE:
The learned "meta-informationists" maintain the original cause of all things to be wind, from which principle this whole universe was first produced and into which it must at last be resolved; that the same breath which had kindled and blew up the flame of nature should one day blow it out.
"AS" has not only calculated the first revolutions of his brain so prudently as to give rise to the remarkable advent of the "meta-information network," but has also succeeded into a new and strange variety of conceptions. The fruitfulness of his imagination has led him into certain notions which, although in appearance very unaccountable, are not without their mysteries and their meanings. No doubt, followers shall countenance and improve them.
He has been extremely careful and exact in recounting such material methods and passages of this nature, as he has been able to collect either from undoubted tradition or from indefatigable reading. He has described them as graphically as it is possible, as far as notions of that height and latitude can be brought within the compass of a pen; nor do I at all question but they will furnish plenty of noble matter for such, whose converting imaginations dispose them to reduce all things into types; who can make shadows, no thanks to the sun; and then mold them into substances, no thanks to philosophy, whose peculiar talent lies in fixing tropes and allegories to the letter and refining what is literal into figure and mystery.
Here, he has attempted a universal system in two small portable volumes of all things that are to be known or believed or imaged or practiced in life. The ancient and arcane method he has utilized is exactly that which I presented to the world two centuries and a half ago for crystallizing "pearls of wisdom:"
You take fair correct copies, well-bound in calfs skin, and lettered at the back, of all modern bodies of arts and sciences whatsoever, and in what language you please. These you distil into balneo mariae, infusing quintessence of poppy Q.S. together with three pints of lethe, to be had from the apothecaries. You cleanse away carefully the sordes and caput mortuum, letting all that is volatile evaporate. You preserve only the first running which is, again, to be distilled seventeen times, till what remains will amount to about two drams. This you keep in a glass viol hermetically sealed for one and twenty days. Then, you begin your "meta-information" treatise, taking every morning fasting, (first shaking the viol) three drops of this elixir, snuffing it strongly up your nose. It will dilate itself about the brain (where there is any) in fourteen minutes, and you immediately perceive in your head an infinite number of abstracts, summaries, compendiums, extracts, collections, medullas, excerpta quaedams, florilegias, and the like, all disposed into great order, and reducible on paper.
By forcing into the light, with much pains and dexterity, his own excellencies and other men's defaults, with great justice to himself and candor to the others, "AS" has proceeded with noble content of mind; and, upon reflecting, how much emolument this whole globe of Earth is like to reap by his labors.
There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where he is not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is coucht underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either of "wit" or "sublime."
I here think fit to bestow that great and honourable privilege of being the "last writer" upon "AS"; he can now claim an absolute authority, in right, as the "freshest modern," which gives him a despotick power over all authors before him.
I shall now dismiss our impatient reader from any farther attendance at the "porch;" and, having duly prepared his mind by a preliminary discourse, shall gladly introduce him to the sublime mysteries that ensue from the pens of "AS" and his less illustrious associates.
Jonathan Swift
VOLUME 1 (contains Part I)
NOTE: As far as we know, Volume II was never written.
VOLUME II (contains Parts II, III, and IV)
"AS" Publications, P. O. Box 149, B-1930 Zaventem 1, Belgium
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