Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson – movie screening and discussion

Tampere, Tue September 16th, 2025

Tiedot suomeksi täältä.

We humans are limited in our abilities to make sense of the world. Considering this, it’s astonishing how easily we end up being absolutely certain about things. What if we said “maybe” more often?

Stand up philosopher, writer, agnostic mystic, anarchist, futurist and skeptic Robert Anton Wilson is a cult figure loved by psychonauts and other explorers of inner worlds. In Finland, he is best known for his Illuminatus! book trilogy, which hilariously explores the absurdities of human affairs. It could be described as surrealist-psychedelic-occult-humorous conspiracy science fiction.

Beyond his works of fiction, Wilson engaged in many pursuits. One of his driving passions was inspiring his fellow humans to look at things from new, unexpected perspectives – or as he himself put it, to explore different reality tunnels. He encouraged conservatives to seek sincere understanding of how the world looks through the eyes of a liberal, and invited atheists to put themselves in the shoes of a believer. One of the concepts he popularized is “maybe logic” which focuses on overcoming dogmatic black-and-white either-or thinking: Rigid beliefs can sometimes prevent us from seeing what’s true. Seemingly contradictory perspectives may be simultaneously true or at least useful. Sometimes it’s more helpful to approach things in terms of probabilities instead of binary yes-or-no framings.

The documentary Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson (2003) offers a deep dive into the mysteries of Wilson’s work. The Association for Finnish Psychedelic Education & Culture (Psykedeelisen sivistyksen liitto ry, PSL) will be screening the documentary in Tampere, Kulttuurikeskus Kaista.

Foreshadowing the increasingly echo-chambered reality of the 2020s, the documentary covers topics such as chaos magic, Irish giant rabbits, the relationship between language and reality, quantum physics, tools for clearer scientific thinking, medical marijuana, William Blake and a puzzling encounter with beings from Sirius. Maybe. 

The movie is in English with Finnish subtitles. After the screening, we’ll have an audience discussion about the themes of the documentary.

Schedule:

17:30 Doors open
18:00 Movie
19:30 Audience discussion
20:15 End

The event takes place in Kulttuurikeskus Kaista, Hatanpään Valtatie 34, entrance E, 2nd floor. The venue is wheelchair accessible, though unfortunately a wheelchair-accessible toilet is not available. The screening starts exactly at 6PM, so to avoid long queues, we kindly ask everyone to arrive in good time.

Presale ticket prices (payment methods MobilePay / payment card):

Regular price €11 
Support price €16
Support price €21

Reserve your tickets here – you’ll get payment links after filling up the form.

Members of Psykedeelisen sivistyksen liitto who’ve paid their membership fee for 2025 will get a discount link that enables a €3 discount for the presale ticket. You can pay our membership fee in our web store.

By buying a support ticket you can help us cover our expenses and support our future activities.

From the door, ticket prices start from €13. Payment methods there are MobilePay, payment card or exact sum in cash. You can also buy our art book Psykedeelit ja luovuus kotimaisessa kuvataiteessa and our other products at the event.