The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds

by J.M.R. Higgs

As well as undergoing drug-induced schizophrenia, Wilson had been raised as a Catholic and had also been a communist in his earlier years. He had fully accepted these two powerful belief systems before rejecting them both. Thanks to this background, he was able to recognise what he would later call a self-referential reality tunnel. This was a philosophy, religion or ideology that was complete and satisfying and which fully explained all the details of the world, assuming that you did not question its central tenet. This central tenet was an idea and often an appealing one – for which there was a distinct lack of evidence, such as the idea that there was a judgemental patriarchal creator God, or that a propertyless communal utopia would be the final stage of society. The surrounding ideology was an elaborate commentary which developed in order to support the central concept in much the same way that a pearl forms around a piece of grit in an oyster. All the theory and education that is needed to fully understand an ‘-ism’ or religion functioned like a sophisticated defence mechanism which protected this central tenet from crashing and burning on the rocks of reality. The reason these ideological defences were so painstakingly built up over time was because, once inside a self-referential reality tunnel, you had a model that made sense of the rest of the world. This could be an extremely appealing situation, and one that you could happily stay in for the rest of your life.