Peter Lamborn Wilson
| Peter Lamborn Wilson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1945 (age 71–72) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Post-anarchism, individualist anarchism |
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Main interests
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refusal of work, post-industrial society, mysticism, utopianism |
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Notable ideas
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Temporary Autonomous Zones |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Peter Lamborn Wilson (pseudonym Hakim Bey; born 1945) is an American anarchist author, primarily known for advocating the concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones.
Wilson is the son of Douglas Emory Wilson, an editor at Harvard University Press and Ralph Waldo Emerson scholar, and Margaret Packwood. His parents divorced when he was thirteen.
While undertaking a classics major at Columbia University, Wilson met Warren Tartaglia, then introducing Islam to students as the leader of a group called the Noble Moors. Attracted by the philosophy, Wilson was initiated into the group, but later joined a group of breakaway members who founded the Moorish Orthodox Church. The Church maintained a presence at the League for Spiritual Discovery, the group established by Timothy Leary, and it is alleged Wilson would visit it for supplies of LSD.
Appalled by the social and political climate, Wilson had also decided to leave America, and shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 he flew to Lebanon. In the words of Michael Muhammad Knight, "The emerging postcolonial world was crowded with American hippies blowing their trust funds on mystical quests…and [Wilson] was one of them."
Wilson travelled to India with the intention of studying Sufism, but became fascinated by Tantra, tracking down Ganesh Baba. He spent a month in a Kathmandu missionary hospital being treated for hepatitis, and practised meditation techniques in a cave above the east bank of the Ganges. He also allegedly ingested significant quantities of cannabis.
Wilson travelled on to Pakistan. There he lived in several places, mixing with princes, Sufis, and gutter dwellers, and moving from teahouses to opium dens. In Quetta he found "a total disregard of all government", with people reliant on family, clans or tribes, which appealed to the anarchist in him.
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