On a higher level* everything is determined by the presence of the inconceivable significance. Staying on a higher level means not allowing anything to occlude it, and this is very easy, as it is very obvious, and it does not occur to you to want to do anything that would occlude it, although it is possible to see that certain kinds of things would, if they were to present themselves and you identified with them.
It is a lot easier than, say, remaining lucid in a lucid dream, because in a lucid dream you have to remember to keep checking up on whether you are still aware that you are dreaming, and it is quite easy to forget to do this and to become emotionally involved in the storyline of the dream.
Post-higher level one focuses on where the significance would be, if it were there, and one goes on avoiding anything that would be occlusive, so that no resistances get set up to make it more difficult to return to a higher level. This is still fairly easy, as one goes on having a definite sense of direction and it is clear what ways of thinking would not be compatible with the actual presence of the significance.
All psychology is about risk-taking although this is only obvious in higher level psychology, and centralised psychology enables you to act against total opposition, with no support at all, and no expectation of a positive outcome.
This was most obvious when my plans were opposed for setting up a research organisation in Oxford, which I had been making while I worked for a would-be D.Phil., which became a B.Litt. Everyone appeared to find the plan threatening as it approached realisation, and all the promises of support fell through. I had no way back into any sort of academic career, and there was no other way I could support myself. I had, as yet, very little capital saved up, and I would not be able to draw anything from social security, as they like to call it, for reasons already explained. So long as I stayed at the SPR I had at least a miserable pittance of a salary, out of which further savings could be made.
I perceived that the only way of using any leverage I had on the situation, arising from Sir George Joy’s and W.H. Salter’s recent memories of the support they had expressed and the promises that had been made, was to resign quickly and appeal for funding ostentatiously; if I delayed, their memories of promises would dim and they could assume that I had sensibly given up on my plan.
So I resigned, and siege conditions of my research unit in Oxford commenced. It was clearly my only hope of salvaging anything from the SPR situation, but perhaps I had no hope at all; however it did feel right on higher level terms, and any alternative plans to hang around waiting for something better to turn up felt distinctly wrong.
My appeals for money brought in peanuts; everyone knew I was to be given no support. The agony should not be prolonged, as Rosalind Heywood told everyone. Sir George and Salter were a bit uncomfortable but inertial.
So I employed an expensive fundraiser in order to expose them to some semblance of publicity. The fundraiser was hostile as well, and the meetings were evasive. I was throwing money at the problem and did not have much to throw. I certainly would not get into debt. Nevertheless, it did feel like the right thing to do, and in a certain way was unconflicted. The only likely outcome was that I would spend all my tiny capital and be left even worse off struggling to survive under siege conditions.
But, after several gruelling meetings at the fundraiser’s office in London, Sir George vouchsafed the information that Cecil Harmsworth King had approached the SPR, wishing to give money for some research to be done.
I said to Sir George that I would write to Cecil King and say that I would do the research. None of the SPR’s Professors were keen to have anything to do with it, they were well enough financed for squabbling and backbiting.
Maybe Sir George thought that if he let me get an absolute minimum of money from Cecil King, he and Salter would be let off the hook and I would not go on pestering them about making approaches to Coombe-Tennants, Balfours, and other potential supporters who had been mentioned. At a later fundraising meeting Sir George tried to persuade me to apply for a certain amount of money, approximately equivalent to three postgraduate research scholarships, i.e. about enough to support three people in the most constricted way. Sir George happened to know, he said, that this was just the amount of support Cecil King had in mind to give, and it would not be advisable to ask for more. I did not believe him.
So eventually it came off, at least to the extent that I got a very modest amount of money, but more than Sir George had wanted me to have.
It was a very nerve-racking process which depended entirely on my appearing to have senior supporters who would act as Trustees, although Sir George and Salter did their best to scupper everything by their prevarication and lack of enthusiasm. Nevertheless Cecil King signed the seven year covenant before Rosalind Heywood got wind of what was happening. I did not place much reliance on Sir George’s discretion and I was on tenterhooks in case he told Rosalind before the covenant was signed, but he cannot have done, although as soon as the covenant was public knowledge, she got on the phone to Cecil King. He thought she was a wonderful person and I was all washed up with him. However, he had signed the covenant so I did get seven years of very modest financial support from him, but she had put the kybosh on his giving me any more support than that.
Seeing that I could not now be absolutely squeezed into non-existence, at least for seven years, Rosalind set about mobilising Professor Hardy to set up a rival establishment in Oxford, as similar as possible to mine, to deflect any publicity or finance that might otherwise have reached me, in spite of her energetic and efficient networking.
And that is how the Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre came into existence. Initially it was to be an exact replica of mine, but Hardy, who did not really want to do anything anyway, decided that warm and woozy religiosity would be more congenial.
* state of existential awareness
Showing posts with label My life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My life. Show all posts
06 April 2007
03 April 2007
My need for a hotel environment
(copy of a letter)
Reviewing what I have written about the stresses that resulted from the retardation of my education, or more to the point, my acquisition of qualifications, so that in the end I was thrown out with no qualification at all, I think I have still underemphasised the importance of my need for a hotel environment. This is such an unacceptable thing to mention that one starts by mentioning other factors first, such as the relative desirability of research in physics rather than maths, and the relative undesirability of a Fellowship or Professorship in maths rather than physics, even if one could get those things.
In fact, the greatest deterrent to feeling motivated to do a degree at the age of 21 for the purpose of spending at least another three years doing a DPhil for the purpose of moving towards a very belated residential Fellowship or Professorship as soon as possible, was that although the Fellowship or Professorship should have provided a hotel environment, the years of doing a DPhil to work towards that outcome would not have done, and this made it very difficult to generate any motivation to work towards another three arduous and unrewarding years, living in circumstances that would rule out any possibility of getting anything out of life, the positive outcome at the end of which was highly dubious, seeing that my past life had been so distorted.
As a DPhil student I would have been living in lodgings, not in college, and with very little access to dining facilities in college. So that was the first horror that I would face on getting a research scholarship to do a DPhil, which of course in the end I did not, being condemned by that failure to the even worse horror of living without a hotel environment and with no academic career track at all along which I could consider myself to be working, however hypothetically, for an appointment accompanied by the hotel environment which was the minimum necessity for a tolerable (not intolerable) life.
If the years since I was prevented from taking the School Certificate at 13 had been less bad I might have found the prospect of continuing to struggle with bad circumstances less daunting. But there came first the additional shock of finding out that I would not even be free to do research (reconstruct physics ad lib) but would have to spend another year taking some ‘qualifying’ exams, solving some other types of problems based on the very dubious theoretical structures of quantum theory as it was. And even then, the additional shock was, that I would not be free to do free-floating research, but that the specific thesis topic I proposed was considered ‘too theoretical’ and I would be faced instead with writing a thesis considered suitable for a mathematician rather than a physicist.
It was very difficult to feel motivated about working for a ‘reward’ so dubious as doing yet another exam in problem-solving followed by a thesis of a tedious nature, in effect much the same kind of thing as solving problems for the sake of proving to other people that one could, all in order to work towards an uncertain and hypothetical reward which might not, even if one could get it, provide the conditions of a hotel environment.
Of course, the alternative was still more horrific, since in total exile from an academic career I would certainly not have the equivalent of a residential college (hotel) environment, nor any tolerable way of earning any money at all, nor any way, tolerable or intolerable, of working towards re-entry to an academic career which was capable, at least potentially, of leading towards what I needed to have.
It was not surprising that I had come to this pass since my education had always been run by people who wanted me not to be able to get anything out of life that I wanted and desperately needed to have. They had not been motivated to let me establish my claim on the sort of career that I needed to have when I was still at an age when doing so could have been a positive rather than a negative experience, and I had had no say in the matter, so it was not really at all surprising that they had succeeded in placing me in this horrifying situation.
However much they liked to ignore the fact, if I was confronted by a situation in which I did not have a hotel environment, the lights of my life went out, and getting an adequate environment became the primary consideration. I did not suppose that the lights could come on again until I had, as a minimum necessity, the minimum requirements of a life that I could get something out of.
I am sorry to have to spell this out at such length, but people have always maintained a blind spot in this, the most crucial area of my life. At least, a blind spot in any positive sense, but great sensitivity in the sense that any move that I might have made to alleviate my position was violently and ingeniously opposed.
Reviewing what I have written about the stresses that resulted from the retardation of my education, or more to the point, my acquisition of qualifications, so that in the end I was thrown out with no qualification at all, I think I have still underemphasised the importance of my need for a hotel environment. This is such an unacceptable thing to mention that one starts by mentioning other factors first, such as the relative desirability of research in physics rather than maths, and the relative undesirability of a Fellowship or Professorship in maths rather than physics, even if one could get those things.
In fact, the greatest deterrent to feeling motivated to do a degree at the age of 21 for the purpose of spending at least another three years doing a DPhil for the purpose of moving towards a very belated residential Fellowship or Professorship as soon as possible, was that although the Fellowship or Professorship should have provided a hotel environment, the years of doing a DPhil to work towards that outcome would not have done, and this made it very difficult to generate any motivation to work towards another three arduous and unrewarding years, living in circumstances that would rule out any possibility of getting anything out of life, the positive outcome at the end of which was highly dubious, seeing that my past life had been so distorted.
As a DPhil student I would have been living in lodgings, not in college, and with very little access to dining facilities in college. So that was the first horror that I would face on getting a research scholarship to do a DPhil, which of course in the end I did not, being condemned by that failure to the even worse horror of living without a hotel environment and with no academic career track at all along which I could consider myself to be working, however hypothetically, for an appointment accompanied by the hotel environment which was the minimum necessity for a tolerable (not intolerable) life.
If the years since I was prevented from taking the School Certificate at 13 had been less bad I might have found the prospect of continuing to struggle with bad circumstances less daunting. But there came first the additional shock of finding out that I would not even be free to do research (reconstruct physics ad lib) but would have to spend another year taking some ‘qualifying’ exams, solving some other types of problems based on the very dubious theoretical structures of quantum theory as it was. And even then, the additional shock was, that I would not be free to do free-floating research, but that the specific thesis topic I proposed was considered ‘too theoretical’ and I would be faced instead with writing a thesis considered suitable for a mathematician rather than a physicist.
It was very difficult to feel motivated about working for a ‘reward’ so dubious as doing yet another exam in problem-solving followed by a thesis of a tedious nature, in effect much the same kind of thing as solving problems for the sake of proving to other people that one could, all in order to work towards an uncertain and hypothetical reward which might not, even if one could get it, provide the conditions of a hotel environment.
Of course, the alternative was still more horrific, since in total exile from an academic career I would certainly not have the equivalent of a residential college (hotel) environment, nor any tolerable way of earning any money at all, nor any way, tolerable or intolerable, of working towards re-entry to an academic career which was capable, at least potentially, of leading towards what I needed to have.
It was not surprising that I had come to this pass since my education had always been run by people who wanted me not to be able to get anything out of life that I wanted and desperately needed to have. They had not been motivated to let me establish my claim on the sort of career that I needed to have when I was still at an age when doing so could have been a positive rather than a negative experience, and I had had no say in the matter, so it was not really at all surprising that they had succeeded in placing me in this horrifying situation.
However much they liked to ignore the fact, if I was confronted by a situation in which I did not have a hotel environment, the lights of my life went out, and getting an adequate environment became the primary consideration. I did not suppose that the lights could come on again until I had, as a minimum necessity, the minimum requirements of a life that I could get something out of.
I am sorry to have to spell this out at such length, but people have always maintained a blind spot in this, the most crucial area of my life. At least, a blind spot in any positive sense, but great sensitivity in the sense that any move that I might have made to alleviate my position was violently and ingeniously opposed.
27 March 2007
Giving money to beggars
When I say that I could never draw social security however hard up I was, because I had been left without any usable qualifications, I mean not merely hard up relative to the cost of remaining physically alive, but hard up relative to the cost of providing myself with the equivalent of a residential college (hotel) environment and the secretarial and other facilities that might have been provided by the sort of academic career which I should have been having, as well as a Professorial salary.
I felt very hard up indeed, and saved money very hard out of my miserable pittance of a salary at the Society for Psychical Research, although it looked as though it would take thousands of years to reach a level of capital at which I could provide myself with the circumstances I needed to have; unless something completely improbable and unpredictable happened in my favour.
I certainly found it very grim to be in such a situation; I could never have believed that anything so terrible could happen to me, nor that if it did, there would be absolutely nobody who would give me any help in remedying my position. Nevertheless I went on giving money to beggars, in order to remember the higher level perspective and not feel totally shut in to an ostensibly hopeless imprisonment in the ‘normal’ world.
I remember one time when Sir George was visiting me in Oxford where I was doing a post-graduate degree which I hoped would provide me with a way of re-accessing an academic career. In the event it did not, because there was nobody who did not want me to be kept down and out, including my own supervisor, Professor Price, who was under the influence of two sources of hostility against me, the Principal of Somerville and Rosalind Heywood at the SPR.
However, while doing this thesis I was in lodgings near Somerville and Sir George and two other Somervillians were in the room with me. A beggar knocked at the door and asked for money. I got everyone to turn out their loose cash and see what they felt able to contribute. Sir George produced a note, but rather disapprovingly. Admittedly he was having to survive on a totally inadequate pension, so he might just have said he was needing it too badly himself, but what he said was, ‘You shouldn’t give him so much. He will only get drunk on it.’
‘That is entirely beside the point,’ I said. I might have added, but didn’t, ‘Money is what he asked for, so that is what he shall have, and what he does with it is nobody’s business but his own.’
Then I went back to the front door to give him the collection.
I felt very hard up indeed, and saved money very hard out of my miserable pittance of a salary at the Society for Psychical Research, although it looked as though it would take thousands of years to reach a level of capital at which I could provide myself with the circumstances I needed to have; unless something completely improbable and unpredictable happened in my favour.
I certainly found it very grim to be in such a situation; I could never have believed that anything so terrible could happen to me, nor that if it did, there would be absolutely nobody who would give me any help in remedying my position. Nevertheless I went on giving money to beggars, in order to remember the higher level perspective and not feel totally shut in to an ostensibly hopeless imprisonment in the ‘normal’ world.
I remember one time when Sir George was visiting me in Oxford where I was doing a post-graduate degree which I hoped would provide me with a way of re-accessing an academic career. In the event it did not, because there was nobody who did not want me to be kept down and out, including my own supervisor, Professor Price, who was under the influence of two sources of hostility against me, the Principal of Somerville and Rosalind Heywood at the SPR.
However, while doing this thesis I was in lodgings near Somerville and Sir George and two other Somervillians were in the room with me. A beggar knocked at the door and asked for money. I got everyone to turn out their loose cash and see what they felt able to contribute. Sir George produced a note, but rather disapprovingly. Admittedly he was having to survive on a totally inadequate pension, so he might just have said he was needing it too badly himself, but what he said was, ‘You shouldn’t give him so much. He will only get drunk on it.’
‘That is entirely beside the point,’ I said. I might have added, but didn’t, ‘Money is what he asked for, so that is what he shall have, and what he does with it is nobody’s business but his own.’
Then I went back to the front door to give him the collection.
23 March 2007
Basic morality and people at the SPR
(copy of a letter)
The years after being thrown out at the end of my ruined ‘education’ were shockingly disillusioning. I did not have much in the way of illusions and I did not expect much of people, but I thought it was not absolutely out of the question that the odd person, here or there, might act in what seemed to me a natural way. However, I did need help very badly, having no means of support and no way of working my way back into an academic career which could lead to a Professorship. I could not, as I have already pointed out, draw Social Security without falsifying my position. I certainly experienced my situation as unbelievably horrifying, so that the universal meanness and opposition was something I could not fail to experience very painfully.
All I hoped of Sir George was that he would not oppose me, even if he would do nothing to help me, which was based on nothing but his mystical flash up a hill in Arabia because, I thought, the basic moral principle is so obvious that quite a short exposure to the higher level situation would give someone a great aversion to frustrating anyone in getting what they wanted in any way, even if they had no resources, financial or motivational, for trying to help them.
I remember saying to Sally, ‘He may not do anything to help me, but at least he won’t actively oppose me’, and she said nothing, perhaps thinking that she understood psychology better than I did. If so, she was right, as before long he was machinating against me and trying to manipulate me as much as anybody.
Rosalind Heywood considered herself a very spiritual person, who could tell whether or not there was a host in situ in a Catholic church in its box on the altar (whatever you call it) by whether or not she could hear a kind of holy singing noise. She got the holy noise in proximity with sacred objects of other religions as well.
She played infallibly on a certain dimension of human psychology and I never knew anyone resist her for long. Sir George did resist her attempts to get him and Salter to oppose my plans on one occasion, but it did not last. This was an unusual experience for her and she looked shaken as she left the office after a confrontational interview, but she was not one to accept defeat. A few weeks later Sir George’s support for me had vanished (how much communication had taken place between them, by telephone or otherwise, I do not know).
Conversion to her point of view was irreversible. I have no doubt that she did sell to all concerned that every particle of support to me should be choked off because it would be kinder to force me to give up on setting up an independent academic establishment. It could not succeed and the sooner I was made to give it up the better. Any support, however tiny, would only be prolonging the agony. This, of course, is head-on violation of the basic moral principle that you do not impose your interpretations and evaluations on somebody else, but give them what they say they want if you can (or if you are able to muster the energy in view of your own problems).
But the idea of frustrating someone, and pretending that you are doing it out of benevolence, is attractive to human psychology, which has a desire to frustrate and to express its power by causing suffering, as fundamental as the higher level drive to do the opposite.
So everybody associated in any way with the SPR and Oxford University joined in trying to squeeze me to death in my own best interests, just as, when I was at school, people had been able to oppose me in everything I wanted on the pretence that they were liberating me from the pressures placed on me by an ambitious father, in both cases no doubt enjoying the opportunity to combine active malevolence with a smug sense of their own compassion and sympathy.
The years after being thrown out at the end of my ruined ‘education’ were shockingly disillusioning. I did not have much in the way of illusions and I did not expect much of people, but I thought it was not absolutely out of the question that the odd person, here or there, might act in what seemed to me a natural way. However, I did need help very badly, having no means of support and no way of working my way back into an academic career which could lead to a Professorship. I could not, as I have already pointed out, draw Social Security without falsifying my position. I certainly experienced my situation as unbelievably horrifying, so that the universal meanness and opposition was something I could not fail to experience very painfully.
All I hoped of Sir George was that he would not oppose me, even if he would do nothing to help me, which was based on nothing but his mystical flash up a hill in Arabia because, I thought, the basic moral principle is so obvious that quite a short exposure to the higher level situation would give someone a great aversion to frustrating anyone in getting what they wanted in any way, even if they had no resources, financial or motivational, for trying to help them.
I remember saying to Sally, ‘He may not do anything to help me, but at least he won’t actively oppose me’, and she said nothing, perhaps thinking that she understood psychology better than I did. If so, she was right, as before long he was machinating against me and trying to manipulate me as much as anybody.
Rosalind Heywood considered herself a very spiritual person, who could tell whether or not there was a host in situ in a Catholic church in its box on the altar (whatever you call it) by whether or not she could hear a kind of holy singing noise. She got the holy noise in proximity with sacred objects of other religions as well.
She played infallibly on a certain dimension of human psychology and I never knew anyone resist her for long. Sir George did resist her attempts to get him and Salter to oppose my plans on one occasion, but it did not last. This was an unusual experience for her and she looked shaken as she left the office after a confrontational interview, but she was not one to accept defeat. A few weeks later Sir George’s support for me had vanished (how much communication had taken place between them, by telephone or otherwise, I do not know).
Conversion to her point of view was irreversible. I have no doubt that she did sell to all concerned that every particle of support to me should be choked off because it would be kinder to force me to give up on setting up an independent academic establishment. It could not succeed and the sooner I was made to give it up the better. Any support, however tiny, would only be prolonging the agony. This, of course, is head-on violation of the basic moral principle that you do not impose your interpretations and evaluations on somebody else, but give them what they say they want if you can (or if you are able to muster the energy in view of your own problems).
But the idea of frustrating someone, and pretending that you are doing it out of benevolence, is attractive to human psychology, which has a desire to frustrate and to express its power by causing suffering, as fundamental as the higher level drive to do the opposite.
So everybody associated in any way with the SPR and Oxford University joined in trying to squeeze me to death in my own best interests, just as, when I was at school, people had been able to oppose me in everything I wanted on the pretence that they were liberating me from the pressures placed on me by an ambitious father, in both cases no doubt enjoying the opportunity to combine active malevolence with a smug sense of their own compassion and sympathy.
04 March 2007
No benefits from the Oppressive State
I really do think I should point out that I have not been able to get any benefit at all out of the Welfare (Oppressive) State. The terms on which the medical ‘profession’ operates are too immoral for me to have anything to do with it. I can only proceed with trying to become as rich as possible so that I can go abroad to some country where the restrictions are less prohibitive if I ever have anything so seriously wrong with me that I need something that can only be obtained via the medical Mafia.
Nor have I ever been able to draw ‘Social Security’ even though deprived of any means of earning a living. Since I was thrown out unqualified for the only sort of career I could have, I never drew any benefit. I was not prepared to pretend that I was seeking work and go through the motions of applying for jobs, such as the schoolteaching that everyone wanted to force me into so as to enjoy my suffering and humiliation. I went to the SPR in the first instance, purely for money, because my parents, at the behest of society at large, were trying to force me to ‘earn a living’. I thought, in view of their oppressive attitude, that I would need to collect any pittance that I could get for my return to Oxford in the autumn. At the SPR, I found there was a potential field of research with which I might be able to regain access to an academic career.
But I have never been able to draw benefits, however hard up I was, because I was thrown out at 21 with no usable qualification for the only sort of career I could have and I could not earn money in any other way. I had no income after my brief and intolerable period of employment at the SPR, which was as intolerable as I had known it would be. I had to put an end to it as soon as I could, before the damage being done to me became even harder to reverse.
Although I had no income, the fact that my supervised ‘education’ had left me with no usable qualification at all meant that I could not draw anything from the ‘social security’. If you can do that, when you are unemployed, you get your National Insurance contributions paid for you, so that you still get a basic state pension at the end. I had to pay voluntary contributions myself out of any money that I could make or obtain for myself in any legal way, to reduce the disadvantage at which I would be when I reached retirement age in comparison with someone who had been able to have a salary.
Nor have I ever been able to draw ‘Social Security’ even though deprived of any means of earning a living. Since I was thrown out unqualified for the only sort of career I could have, I never drew any benefit. I was not prepared to pretend that I was seeking work and go through the motions of applying for jobs, such as the schoolteaching that everyone wanted to force me into so as to enjoy my suffering and humiliation. I went to the SPR in the first instance, purely for money, because my parents, at the behest of society at large, were trying to force me to ‘earn a living’. I thought, in view of their oppressive attitude, that I would need to collect any pittance that I could get for my return to Oxford in the autumn. At the SPR, I found there was a potential field of research with which I might be able to regain access to an academic career.
But I have never been able to draw benefits, however hard up I was, because I was thrown out at 21 with no usable qualification for the only sort of career I could have and I could not earn money in any other way. I had no income after my brief and intolerable period of employment at the SPR, which was as intolerable as I had known it would be. I had to put an end to it as soon as I could, before the damage being done to me became even harder to reverse.
Although I had no income, the fact that my supervised ‘education’ had left me with no usable qualification at all meant that I could not draw anything from the ‘social security’. If you can do that, when you are unemployed, you get your National Insurance contributions paid for you, so that you still get a basic state pension at the end. I had to pay voluntary contributions myself out of any money that I could make or obtain for myself in any legal way, to reduce the disadvantage at which I would be when I reached retirement age in comparison with someone who had been able to have a salary.
09 January 2007
The need to repeat the factors of my position
(copy of a letter)
I am afraid I am likely to repeat myself in writing to you, but this is because I know that believers in society are unlikely to remember anything which a victim of society says to them except what is compatible with the approved social way of looking at their situation. (This is the way counsellors are recommended to proceed.)
So I may have said before, but will say again, that the educational and academic system cannot but be geared against ability if those who have the power to make decisions about other people are motivated to demonstrate that innate ability does not naturally correspond to a much higher level of achievement, in terms of both quality and quantity, than less remarkable ability. In order to bring about equality of outcome it is necessary to restrict the opportunities of the able, by deprivation of opportunity to take exams so long as they are supposed to be being educated, and by deprivation of money to keep them as inactive as possible in adult life (i.e. when they have been thrown out).
In fact everyone in my life has always behaved as if they understood this and the greatest storms have arisen whenever I was on the verge of getting an opportunity to take a public exam in a favourable way, or acquiring a financial advantage or a new associate who might relieve the constriction of my position.
I should also repeat that as soon as I was thrown out (50 years ago), I knew that my life could not become tolerable again until I was rich enough to provide myself with an institutional (hotel) environment, and also had the status of an Oxbridge professor.
Everything I have done ever since has been aimed at working towards one or both of these objectives. Most of my efforts have been made as abortive as possible, but my position now is just marginally less painful than 50 years ago, although still not the equivalent of that of a Professor with a research department to run and a residential college environment to provide hotel facilities.
The idea of anything I can do in my present circumstances being ‘interesting’ or rewarding to me in any way is ludicrous. I do not regard writing as a positive activity; it is chore which is dependent on one’s energy level, the energy level having to be raised by other activities. I regard it as a form of output rather than input.
I am afraid I am likely to repeat myself in writing to you, but this is because I know that believers in society are unlikely to remember anything which a victim of society says to them except what is compatible with the approved social way of looking at their situation. (This is the way counsellors are recommended to proceed.)
So I may have said before, but will say again, that the educational and academic system cannot but be geared against ability if those who have the power to make decisions about other people are motivated to demonstrate that innate ability does not naturally correspond to a much higher level of achievement, in terms of both quality and quantity, than less remarkable ability. In order to bring about equality of outcome it is necessary to restrict the opportunities of the able, by deprivation of opportunity to take exams so long as they are supposed to be being educated, and by deprivation of money to keep them as inactive as possible in adult life (i.e. when they have been thrown out).
In fact everyone in my life has always behaved as if they understood this and the greatest storms have arisen whenever I was on the verge of getting an opportunity to take a public exam in a favourable way, or acquiring a financial advantage or a new associate who might relieve the constriction of my position.
I should also repeat that as soon as I was thrown out (50 years ago), I knew that my life could not become tolerable again until I was rich enough to provide myself with an institutional (hotel) environment, and also had the status of an Oxbridge professor.
Everything I have done ever since has been aimed at working towards one or both of these objectives. Most of my efforts have been made as abortive as possible, but my position now is just marginally less painful than 50 years ago, although still not the equivalent of that of a Professor with a research department to run and a residential college environment to provide hotel facilities.
The idea of anything I can do in my present circumstances being ‘interesting’ or rewarding to me in any way is ludicrous. I do not regard writing as a positive activity; it is chore which is dependent on one’s energy level, the energy level having to be raised by other activities. I regard it as a form of output rather than input.
05 January 2007
Fathers and agents of the collective
(copy of a letter)
Well, I am as always grateful for the chance to see you, and as usual I am reminded of things I need to emphasise when writing for publication. The way your mind works continues to amaze me, although I know it is just like everybody else’s.
Everyone always focuses attention on conflicts with parents, while exonerating or making light of the hostility of agents of the collective. I have (and had at the time) no doubt that my parents’ remarkable treatment of me after the disastrous degree exam was really an expression of the hostility of the educational system - the latter seeing the situation as giving free rein to its wish to tear and rend me, only (as previously) they remained invisible and distant, using my parents as their channel of communication.
I blame the Essex education authority, Somerville and the educational system in general for destroying, not only my career prospects, but my relationship with my parents and the lives of my parents. It was, I thought, like pouring corrosive acid down a metal pipe. It reaches its target at the other end all right, but the pipe is itself damaged in the process. It should be possible to sue for very large financial damages, and the fact that it is not is a clear indication of the oppressiveness of modern society.
When my father ran from door to door blocking my exit I have no doubt he was implementing the ideas of the Essex Authority on how I should be treated. ‘She needs to learn that she can’t have everything she wants just when she wants it,’ had been quoted to me after one of his conversations with local people. My father was rigorous in his paternalistic concealments, and if he quoted anything to me from the outside world it meant that he wanted it to influence me.
The agents of the educational system were totally ruthless towards me (in the sense of merciless, although 'ruthless' is usually used in commercial contexts, where it is in fact less unmanageable). My parents were more ambivalent towards me, and would have treated me okay if they had not been told not to. As it was, although they had jealousies of their own that could be played on, my parents had a marginal sympathy with me, and their normal personalities broke down under the stress of being required to 'execute' their own offspring.
Rather like Abraham having to sacrifice Isaac really, especially as the concept of God is so close to that of Society in ‘normal’ psychology.
Well, I am as always grateful for the chance to see you, and as usual I am reminded of things I need to emphasise when writing for publication. The way your mind works continues to amaze me, although I know it is just like everybody else’s.
Everyone always focuses attention on conflicts with parents, while exonerating or making light of the hostility of agents of the collective. I have (and had at the time) no doubt that my parents’ remarkable treatment of me after the disastrous degree exam was really an expression of the hostility of the educational system - the latter seeing the situation as giving free rein to its wish to tear and rend me, only (as previously) they remained invisible and distant, using my parents as their channel of communication.
I blame the Essex education authority, Somerville and the educational system in general for destroying, not only my career prospects, but my relationship with my parents and the lives of my parents. It was, I thought, like pouring corrosive acid down a metal pipe. It reaches its target at the other end all right, but the pipe is itself damaged in the process. It should be possible to sue for very large financial damages, and the fact that it is not is a clear indication of the oppressiveness of modern society.
When my father ran from door to door blocking my exit I have no doubt he was implementing the ideas of the Essex Authority on how I should be treated. ‘She needs to learn that she can’t have everything she wants just when she wants it,’ had been quoted to me after one of his conversations with local people. My father was rigorous in his paternalistic concealments, and if he quoted anything to me from the outside world it meant that he wanted it to influence me.
The agents of the educational system were totally ruthless towards me (in the sense of merciless, although 'ruthless' is usually used in commercial contexts, where it is in fact less unmanageable). My parents were more ambivalent towards me, and would have treated me okay if they had not been told not to. As it was, although they had jealousies of their own that could be played on, my parents had a marginal sympathy with me, and their normal personalities broke down under the stress of being required to 'execute' their own offspring.
Rather like Abraham having to sacrifice Isaac really, especially as the concept of God is so close to that of Society in ‘normal’ psychology.
30 October 2006
No advantages, no money, no people
Everything that has ever happened to me works very well on the hypothesis that everybody knows that I am to get no real advantages ever that can possibly be prevented. Any amount of persecution and opposition is OK, but no money, no people to work for me.
This is still the case. As I was thrown out 50 years ago absolutely destitute, with no career, no tolerable way of earning money, no capital with which to do investment, no friends or supporters who would give me money or support my attempts to get it, I felt the pinch very severely, and of course it is still very depressing (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) for everyone here that the brick wall remains so absolutely impervious, and there is no reason to hope that it will ever get less so.
Beating our heads against the brick wall, I mean attempting to interact with the social environment in any way (e.g. by publishing a book, giving a seminar, or meeting a new potential associate), is always just an expenditure of effort and a crushing reminder that nothing has changed; one is still non-existent in the eyes of society and of every individual microcosm of it (except as an object of attack and persecution).
It takes a lot of energy to withstand and recover from the effects of this, every time it happens, and to lick our wounds in preparation for our next tiny onslaught on the barriers erected around us by a hostile society.
But, anyway, that is how it is. It seems as if every individual knows, and has access to a computer database for working out, that we must never secure a net advantage from any interaction with a person, so they will only work on penal terms, or leave quickly if there is any chance of their becoming a positive factor.
It is rather like the exam-taking process. It seemed as if it was something from which I would be able to secure real benefits, but other people were involved; I was not a free agent, and the whole process could be made into a negative.
This is still the case. As I was thrown out 50 years ago absolutely destitute, with no career, no tolerable way of earning money, no capital with which to do investment, no friends or supporters who would give me money or support my attempts to get it, I felt the pinch very severely, and of course it is still very depressing (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) for everyone here that the brick wall remains so absolutely impervious, and there is no reason to hope that it will ever get less so.
Beating our heads against the brick wall, I mean attempting to interact with the social environment in any way (e.g. by publishing a book, giving a seminar, or meeting a new potential associate), is always just an expenditure of effort and a crushing reminder that nothing has changed; one is still non-existent in the eyes of society and of every individual microcosm of it (except as an object of attack and persecution).
It takes a lot of energy to withstand and recover from the effects of this, every time it happens, and to lick our wounds in preparation for our next tiny onslaught on the barriers erected around us by a hostile society.
But, anyway, that is how it is. It seems as if every individual knows, and has access to a computer database for working out, that we must never secure a net advantage from any interaction with a person, so they will only work on penal terms, or leave quickly if there is any chance of their becoming a positive factor.
It is rather like the exam-taking process. It seemed as if it was something from which I would be able to secure real benefits, but other people were involved; I was not a free agent, and the whole process could be made into a negative.
A mock maths exam
(copy of a letter)
Perhaps I should attempt to explain the true context when I refer to my useless little bits of apparent success in a social context. ‘You must have been pleased’, you said of my distinction mark in a mock maths exam. Well, it had been a mildly pleasant and enlivening way of spending the few days of unsupervised preparation, a brief holiday from my increasingly desolate and wearing life in the Sixth Form with no exams to prepare for. (This was after I had been prevented from taking the School Certificate exam and hence delayed in registering as a candidate for London University external degrees.)
Although enlivening, in these few days I did not reach as high an energy level as I could have been experiencing every day if I had taken the School Certificate and proceeded to take as many exams as possible as fast as possible. I was also bitterly aware that it was not an exam I had taken for real and could put on my CV. I was thoroughly browned off with coming top of school exams, with nothing permanent to show for the effort that had been put into them, and I did not want to have to do any more of it. It just added to my disaffection with anything not done for real and in the context of a public exam.
Then again, it was a reminder of the right way of doing maths, but I had no way of changing my circumstances so that I could stop doing everything in the worst possible way. I had no right to make decisions about my own arrangements, although my mental age (a concept not yet censored out of existence) was no less than 21 (if my IQ had been 150), not less than 25 (assuming an IQ of 180 which I had been said to have), and not less than 35 assuming an IQ of 250 (which might reasonably have been guessed from my early reading).
Perhaps I should attempt to explain the true context when I refer to my useless little bits of apparent success in a social context. ‘You must have been pleased’, you said of my distinction mark in a mock maths exam. Well, it had been a mildly pleasant and enlivening way of spending the few days of unsupervised preparation, a brief holiday from my increasingly desolate and wearing life in the Sixth Form with no exams to prepare for. (This was after I had been prevented from taking the School Certificate exam and hence delayed in registering as a candidate for London University external degrees.)
Although enlivening, in these few days I did not reach as high an energy level as I could have been experiencing every day if I had taken the School Certificate and proceeded to take as many exams as possible as fast as possible. I was also bitterly aware that it was not an exam I had taken for real and could put on my CV. I was thoroughly browned off with coming top of school exams, with nothing permanent to show for the effort that had been put into them, and I did not want to have to do any more of it. It just added to my disaffection with anything not done for real and in the context of a public exam.
Then again, it was a reminder of the right way of doing maths, but I had no way of changing my circumstances so that I could stop doing everything in the worst possible way. I had no right to make decisions about my own arrangements, although my mental age (a concept not yet censored out of existence) was no less than 21 (if my IQ had been 150), not less than 25 (assuming an IQ of 180 which I had been said to have), and not less than 35 assuming an IQ of 250 (which might reasonably have been guessed from my early reading).
23 October 2006
More about my time at the SPR
(copy of a letter)
Well, as I explained about the way my mind works in picking up on a new area, I may as well say that this is actually relevant to the way I do research, or would do it if not prevented, in any field.
I have always been slandered as being ‘interested’ in parapsychology in the way in which other people are. Actually I went to the SPR (Society for the Prevention of Research) under duress, because my parents, acting as agents of the collective, were putting me under pressure to support myself (‘earn a living’) as a person who no longer had any right to try to find any way of getting into an academic career.
I went there for purely financial reasons, hoping that by selling myself into degraded slavery in this way I might save a little money towards supporting myself when I returned to Oxford as a freelance outcast academic.
I knew nothing about what was going on in ‘the subject’ and I was picking everything up from scratch, but in fact I took in all the information that was going, including psychological and psychiatric, and my mind started to re-structure it, as it does, into potential fields of research in which I might be able to make progress.
My mind automatically discarded nearly everything that the ‘psychical researchers’ were preoccupied with, especially the preoccupation with spiritualistic models, survival, evidentiality, and ‘proof’.
I may say that, while I attempted to be open-minded, I have never found it necessary to invoke spiritualistic concepts when considering the reported experiences.
You said that all this fraud was designed to put people off the subject, and I agree that it is. But I did not consider people’s rationalisations as any guide to their motivation.
Those who concern themselves with parapsychology are as disinclined as anyone else to let anything potentially disturbing be found out. The fact is that some of the reported phenomena are close to issues which people find alarming.
Well, as I explained about the way my mind works in picking up on a new area, I may as well say that this is actually relevant to the way I do research, or would do it if not prevented, in any field.
I have always been slandered as being ‘interested’ in parapsychology in the way in which other people are. Actually I went to the SPR (Society for the Prevention of Research) under duress, because my parents, acting as agents of the collective, were putting me under pressure to support myself (‘earn a living’) as a person who no longer had any right to try to find any way of getting into an academic career.
I went there for purely financial reasons, hoping that by selling myself into degraded slavery in this way I might save a little money towards supporting myself when I returned to Oxford as a freelance outcast academic.
I knew nothing about what was going on in ‘the subject’ and I was picking everything up from scratch, but in fact I took in all the information that was going, including psychological and psychiatric, and my mind started to re-structure it, as it does, into potential fields of research in which I might be able to make progress.
My mind automatically discarded nearly everything that the ‘psychical researchers’ were preoccupied with, especially the preoccupation with spiritualistic models, survival, evidentiality, and ‘proof’.
I may say that, while I attempted to be open-minded, I have never found it necessary to invoke spiritualistic concepts when considering the reported experiences.
You said that all this fraud was designed to put people off the subject, and I agree that it is. But I did not consider people’s rationalisations as any guide to their motivation.
Those who concern themselves with parapsychology are as disinclined as anyone else to let anything potentially disturbing be found out. The fact is that some of the reported phenomena are close to issues which people find alarming.
19 October 2006
Claustrophobia in Bournemouth
(This is a piece of autobiography.)
In my first year at Somerville College I was in a bad way. My life was blackly nightmarish; everything positive had been squeezed out of it long ago by the adverse arrangements that had been imposed upon me.
In one of the vacations, my parents took me to a self-catering apartment in Bournemouth. I remember it, although only faintly, as an experience of the utmost unhappiness and desolation. Existential illumination was a thing of the past; it belonged in my happy former life.
One night in bed I had a headache, which would not go away. Remaining completely still quietened it and it gradually subsided, but any movement re-aroused its throbbing intensity, and a long period of patient immobility was necessary to quieten it again. I began to have existential claustrophobia. Here I was, trapped in a little cave behind my eyes, not free to move and aware only of the presence or absence of pain. My life was hopeless and terrible, my parents cold and hostile. And I was stuck in a kind of reality that I knew nothing about. All that I was sure of was the total uncertainty.
I had a sort of principle of not trying to terminate existential perceptions, shocking though they might be; they were, after all, realistic. But usually in the past they had quickly ended of themselves; as if my mind automatically blocked out too great an intensity of intolerability, rather like blowing a fuse.
Now, however, the claustrophobia, like the headache, persisted and I lay in my enforced stillness wondering when it would come to an end. I became desperate and wondered whether to go and wake my parents. But what would be the use of that? They did not know anything either about what anything was about. I did not even know if they were real beings with separate consciousnesses. For all I knew, they might be only images in my dream. So no relief was to be sought from them.
But eventually I thought that I must find a way of stopping this. I had always thought that my drive to do research arose out of my perceptions of existential unknowability.
So I said to the claustrophobia: ‘Couldn’t you call it off for the moment? I don’t see that I am getting any more out of this than I have already got. I am in a terrible situation and I don’t know anything, but there isn’t anything I can do about it. There is no way of finding anything out.’
‘However, I think the only answer is to say that I will do research. And I will. The way ahead of me is pretty hopeless and I don’t know exactly how, but I will do research, or at least I will always be trying to find a way. So is that all right and do you think you might stop now?’
The claustrophobia ebbed miraculously and I thought, ‘That seems to confirm that I got that psychological connection right.’
In my first year at Somerville College I was in a bad way. My life was blackly nightmarish; everything positive had been squeezed out of it long ago by the adverse arrangements that had been imposed upon me.
In one of the vacations, my parents took me to a self-catering apartment in Bournemouth. I remember it, although only faintly, as an experience of the utmost unhappiness and desolation. Existential illumination was a thing of the past; it belonged in my happy former life.
One night in bed I had a headache, which would not go away. Remaining completely still quietened it and it gradually subsided, but any movement re-aroused its throbbing intensity, and a long period of patient immobility was necessary to quieten it again. I began to have existential claustrophobia. Here I was, trapped in a little cave behind my eyes, not free to move and aware only of the presence or absence of pain. My life was hopeless and terrible, my parents cold and hostile. And I was stuck in a kind of reality that I knew nothing about. All that I was sure of was the total uncertainty.
I had a sort of principle of not trying to terminate existential perceptions, shocking though they might be; they were, after all, realistic. But usually in the past they had quickly ended of themselves; as if my mind automatically blocked out too great an intensity of intolerability, rather like blowing a fuse.
Now, however, the claustrophobia, like the headache, persisted and I lay in my enforced stillness wondering when it would come to an end. I became desperate and wondered whether to go and wake my parents. But what would be the use of that? They did not know anything either about what anything was about. I did not even know if they were real beings with separate consciousnesses. For all I knew, they might be only images in my dream. So no relief was to be sought from them.
But eventually I thought that I must find a way of stopping this. I had always thought that my drive to do research arose out of my perceptions of existential unknowability.
So I said to the claustrophobia: ‘Couldn’t you call it off for the moment? I don’t see that I am getting any more out of this than I have already got. I am in a terrible situation and I don’t know anything, but there isn’t anything I can do about it. There is no way of finding anything out.’
‘However, I think the only answer is to say that I will do research. And I will. The way ahead of me is pretty hopeless and I don’t know exactly how, but I will do research, or at least I will always be trying to find a way. So is that all right and do you think you might stop now?’
The claustrophobia ebbed miraculously and I thought, ‘That seems to confirm that I got that psychological connection right.’
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