Why I cannot write long books

Sir George Joy KBE CMG
(1896 - 1974)

Professor H.H. Price, my DPhil supervisor, when saying that I had an alpha mind, also said that I could say more in one page than most people would say in three. In this context he recognised the brevity of my writing as indicating the high quality of my thinking; but this brevity was generally a drawback, which made fulfilling academic requirements even more burdensome than it would otherwise have been.

My book The Human Evasion perhaps illustrates this brevity at its most extreme. In that case a few people seem to have regarded the brevity as a merit. R.H. Ward said in his Foreword to the book, ‘Few books, long or short, are great ones; this book is short and among those few.’ Sir George Joy described it as ‘a great book’.

One of the aphorisms in my book The Decline and Fall of Science states, ‘I cannot write long books; I leave that for those who have nothing to say’.

It was hard work for me to produce a postgraduate thesis of the expected length, even though I had plenty of ideas, and covered the topic exhaustively and in great analytical detail. By contrast, most DPhil theses contain far fewer ideas, but manage to spin their material out to great length.

Professor Price’s recognition of the quality of my writing did not lead him to suggest to the faculty that it had gone on long enough, when I was still far short of the average length. The bookbinding firm in Oxford to whom I eventually took the thesis in for binding commented on its shortness and the difficulty of finding a hardcover binding that was small enough. Perhaps, of course, they were trying to undermine me, as people often did.

A good deal of academic writing has the opposite characteristic to mine, as the reader has to plough through a lot of waffle to discover the point, or points, if any, of the piece of writing.

When people started to do nominal research in the area of lucid dreams, some years after the publication of my book Lucid Dreams, Dr Keith Hearne acknowledged my priority in this field at the beginning of his own book on the subject. I cannot remember whether it was here or elsewhere that he referred to my book as a ‘little book’. As in the case of my thesis, I had managed to say a lot in a very short space in Lucid Dreams, but this only made it possible to belittle it, rather than its conciseness being regarded as an achievement.

The same problem arose in connection with the speed at which I worked. When I was at school, the fact that I could take exams and get very high marks in them at very short notice was taken as indicating overwork on my part, or ‘pushing’ by my parents. I expect it was taken as a contributory reason for rejecting my DPhil thesis, and awarding it only a BLitt, that I had spent only four years on it, while commuting between Oxford and London to work half the week at the Society for Psychical Research.

A fellow undergraduate

Maria Casares (1922-1996),
star of Cocteau’s Orphée

When I was an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford, in the early 1950s, there was a fellow undergraduate called Jane* Smith. She had a strikingly self-possessed manner which made it difficult for people to become familiar with her, and her strong resemblance to Maria Casares, the film actress whose father Santiago Casares Quiroga had been Prime Minister of Spain, was often remarked upon. We spoke a lot to each other for several terms, and you could say we were friends.

We lost touch completely a few years after I left college, and I have never heard from Jane since. I was thinking of her recently, and looked her up on Google, via which I learnt that she had donated money to Somerville College recently, in 2010-11. (The Somerville College Report for Donors of that financial period does not say how much any of the donors contributed.)

Jane is likely to have known decades ago that I was attempting to set up a research institute in an attempt to remedy my position. If she knew that I was still appealing for funding at the time she made her donation to Somerville, she might have considered making a donation to me instead of, or as well as, making one to Somerville.

My education, paid for by the State, left me with no source of income and no way of working my way back into an academic career. Jane had not been exposed to State education, having attended St Paul’s Girls’ School, a prestigious private school in London, where contacts with wealthy families could be made.

One might have expected that college friends would be sympathetic to the needs of their friends (a friend in need is a friend indeed). However, Jane donated to a socially recognised institution but not to mine. Nor have any other of my college friends helped me in my attempt to remedy my destitute position, which I found shocking.

There were a good many people at Somerville who were aware of my impoverished position relative to theirs, but who gave me no financial or other help in response to my appeals, although they probably did make donations to socially approved organisations such as Somerville College or Oxfam.

People seem to think that if someone cannot get support from a socially recognised source, they should not receive any at all.

* Names have been changed.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

Appeal for funding to lucid dream researchers

The following is an edited version of something I published on the web some years ago. Since that time, no financial contributions have been made by any of the individuals mentioned.
I continue to appeal to anyone who has derived advantage from the topic of lucid dreaming, either as a field for research, or as a topic of personal interest, to contribute not less than £2000 per annum towards funding for my research and my personal income.

When I was interviewed by the head of the Oxford University philosophy appointments board, a senior professor, to discuss how I might get onto a salaried university career track as an academic philosopher, I did not attempt to conceal my bitterness at the fact that my book on lucid dreaming, which I had written under duress because I had no other way of advertising my need for funding to do laboratory research to force my way back into a university career, had provided academics around the world, already safely on career tracks, with advantageous areas of research.

The professor hastened to defend the academics for doing nothing to improve my position, by saying that once a piece of work had been published it was free to anyone to work on it. And of course there is no law asserting that anyone should recognise the socially disadvantaged position of someone else, or do anything more than is strictly prescribed by law to help them. But spontaneous decency is not illegal, even where not socially prescribed. It is not explicitly recognised that it is socially proscribed. There was no law against the professor himself, having recognised that he had become aware of someone so seriously disadvantaged in life in comparison with himself, donating to me half of his own salary, or any other fraction of it, from that time forwards. Or he might have wished to make a mailing to all academics around the world known to have worked on lucid dreams, in which he could have expressed to them his own recognition of my disadvantaged position, and his own hope that each of them would make a significant annual donation out of their own salaries towards compensating me for my continuing lack of a university career, despite the fact that there was no legal obligation on them to do so.

Many years ago an international conference on lucid dreaming was held at London University and I was invited to contribute by giving a paper, although no one had shown any sign of wanting to provide me with funding to contribute by way of research.

At the conference someone informed me that he was sure I should be really pleased that some more of my ideas for research were going to be tried out at Stanford University. I felt about as overjoyed as if I had been slapped in the face, and it just illustrates how insensitive to my predicament those who themselves benefited from my work on lucid dreams have always been.

I was (and still am), in my grievous and destitute position, very embittered that it did not occur to any of those who worked on lucid dreams, salaried as nearly all of them were, to send me money to relieve my unsalaried position. If each of those concerned had sent a contribution of £2000 per annum (even if only while they were actually working on lucid dreams) my position would have been significantly improved and by now I would probably have been able to publish enough research to force my way back into a university position. It is not too late for my position to be relieved in this way. In fact the urgency that it should be has only increased with the decades of delay, since I am still physically alive, and needing to get started on my forty-year academic career.

So I am appealing to anyone who has derived advantage from lucid dreaming, either as a field for academic research or as a topic of personal interest, to contribute either a lump sum towards the £2 million which I need to set up a residential college, or to contribute not less than £2000 per annum towards my research and my personal income.

Legacies of any size are also requested. There is no upper limit, as the endowment required for residential colleges and research departments is considerable. Please note that any donations or legacies should be made direct to me, and not to any organisation with which I may seem to be associated. The latter leads to so much complication that the benefit is severely reduced, and probably completely aborted.

I address this appeal particularly to the following, who are known to have made use of the concept of lucid dreaming in their careers.


List of lucid dream researchers

A. Baker A. Brylowski A.A. Sheikh Alan Moffitt Alan Worsley B. Kediskerski B. McLeod B. McWilliams B. Rodenelli B. Shillig B.G. Marcot C. Sachau C. Sawicki C.N. Alexander Charles Tart D. Armstrong-Hickey D. Davidson D. Foulkes D. Orme-Johnson D.B. Jenkins D.E. Hewitt D.S. Rogo David B. Cohen Elendur Haraldsson F.A. Wolf Fariba Bogzaran G.S. Sparrow Gayle Delaney George Gillespie Gordon Halliday H. Reed Harry Hunt Harvey J. Irwin J. Adams J. Dane J. Walling J. Wren-Lewis Jane Bosveld Janet Mullington Jayne Gackenbach Judith R. Malamud K. Kelzer K. McGowan K. McKelvey

K.P. Vieira Keith Hearne L. L. Magallon L. Levitan L. Nagel L. Rokes L.L. Magallon M. Walters M.L. Lucescu Mary Godwyn Morton Schatzman N. Heilman O. Clerc P. Maxwell P.D. Tyson Patricia Garfield Paul Tholey Peter Fellows Peter Fenwick R. Boyer R. Cranson R. Curren R. George R.J. Small Robert D. Ogilvie Robert F. Price Robert Hoffmann Robert K. Dentan Robert Van de Castle Roger Wells Ross Pigneau S. Boyt S. Hammons S. Stone Sheila Purcell Stephen LaBerge Susan Blackmore T. Neilsen Thomas Snyder V. Zarcone W. Dement W. Greenleaf Wynn Schwartz

Dream research

We recently received an enquiry from the magazine of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, requesting an interview. This is the text of my colleague Dr Charles McCreery’s reply.

“Thank you for your email addressed to Celia Green, to which she has asked me to reply. I am the co-author with her of Lucid Dreaming: the Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep, which was published by Routledge in 1994.

We were invited by Routledge to write this book. We would not otherwise have considered writing a follow-up to Dr Green’s first book on the subject, Lucid Dreams, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1968, since the latter had not resulted, as we had hoped, in any financial support being forthcoming to enable us to carry out any of the experimental work which Dr Green had in mind.

Instead, several years after the publication of Lucid Dreams, we found other people entering the field, who were funded by university appointments in most cases. They began to carry out work which acknowledged Dr Green’s priority and the influence it had had on their own decision to enter the field of research, but which did not represent the sort of research which she had had in mind to do herself. Nor did it have any effect in making it any more possible for us to raise funds for our own work.

We are still appealing for funding to continue our work in this and other fields. We are also appealing for funding to keep Dr Green’s first book on lucid dreams in print, as well as books on other topics which we have written and published, and further books which we could write, or edit and publish, if we had funding to do so.

We are short-staffed on account of our lack of funding. Dr Green does not give interviews as we have found it impossible to avoid misinterpretations.

I add below three links to pieces which Dr Green has published on the topic of lucid dreaming in recent years on her blog, and which describe our attempts to get funding for continuing her research in this area.”

Lucid dreams: watching others get the benefit

An appeal to Harvard

More on lucid dreams and the BBC

Lucid dreams: watching others get the benefit

text of a letter to a journalist sent a few years ago

When you came you asked me whether I regretted having written the first book on lucid dreams, and I should like to answer that in writing. It may be too late for your article, but I am often asked similar questions by journalists and maybe when I have written it down it can go in my forthcoming book.

In my previous letter to you I referred to academics who make applications for funding for a project, don’t get any, and then find someone else is doing a similar project. Do you suppose they regret making the application? Of course with hindsight they may think that if they had known the outcome they would not have bothered, but they could only have found out what the outcome would be by making the application, so in a sense I suppose they do not regret having made the attempt.

My position about lucid dreams is similar. I had no wish to write a book about lucid dreams, and would not have done so if I had had any way of proceeding with actual laboratory research on lucid dreams or on anything else, but all the possible sources of funding with which I had contact were impervious, and so I made what was in effect an application for funding. But I had no way of doing that except by publicising to the world my acquaintance with this potential field of research.

Of course, the academic who finds his ideas being copied has no cause for complaint. His ideas are not protected by patent or copyright, and if he makes them known to the personnel of a grant-giving body they may leak. There is no law against insider dealing in this area. In any case, even if there were, he would find it difficult to pin anything on anybody, unless his application drew on unpublished material known only to himself and this clearly appeared in the design of the other person’s project. This is very unlikely to be the case, and if specialised information is not involved, the other academic can always claim that he thought up the project independently. Great minds are said to think alike, and mediocre ones certainly do.

And, of course, it does the rejected academic no real harm, unless you count emotional bitterness as harmful, to see someone else implementing his ideas. In this respect, however, the emotional pain has been decidedly more severe in my case, in relation to lucid dreams, than that of the average rejected academic is likely to be. The academic has his status and salary; a certain lifestyle including ancillary staff and dining halls etc, facilitating intellectual activity, is assured. I was attempting to compensate for my lack of these things by getting funding to enable me to live a decent academic life, and this was a desperate long shot at best.

It therefore caused me some intensity of despair to observe that one of my long shots had in fact succeeded to the extent of providing other people, already safely on academic career tracks, with a field of research. As the minimal funding which had made possible the writing of the book had run out, there was no way in which I could hope to improve on the application for funding which I had just made.

A person on a desert island cannot exactly say that he regrets having fired a distress rocket without success. He understands what led him to do it, and in the same circumstances he would do the same again. But if I had known what the consequences of initiating this field of research might be, I might have refrained. The expansion of work and interest in this field can only appear to someone in my position as a cruel mockery of it, a refinement of torture which I could have done without.

Article on lucid dreaming in BBC Focus Magazine

text of an email from the picture editor at BBC Focus Magazine:

Dear Ms. Green,

I am mailing from BBC Focus Magazine, a popular science and technology publication. In our August issue we are running a feature about dreams, and how you may be able to take control of them. We mention your early research into lucid dreaming in our piece, and I wondered if you might be able to provide us with an image of yourself that we can put alongside the copy.

I would be happy to credit the image and send you a copy of the magazine in return.

Best wishes,
James Cutmore

text of my colleague Dr Charles McCreery’s reply:

Dear Mr Cutmore,

Thank you for your message to Celia Green, to which Dr Green has asked me to reply. I am the co-author with her of her follow-up book Lucid Dreaming, the Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep, published by Routledge.

The position is not merely that Dr Green carried out ‘early research’ into lucid dreaming, but that she was the first to develop the subject as a field of scientific study, a programme for which she laid out in her book Lucid Dreams, first published in 1968 by Hamish Hamilton.

This priority was fully recognised by her successors in the field some years later, notably Professor Stephen LaBerge and Dr Keith Hearne.

I add below three links to pieces which Dr Green has published on the topic of lucid dreaming in recent years on her blog, which describe our attempts to get funding for continuing her research in this area.

I will send you a scan of a photograph attached to a separate email.

Yours sincerely,
Charles McCreery

text of James Cutmore’s reply:

Dear Charles,

Many thanks for sending the image through to me. We do, in fact, state that Dr Green was the first person to experiment extensively with lucid dreaming, and develop an understanding of it. My first email was written in haste, so many apologies for that.

Please enjoy the rest of your day, and thank you again for your help.

Best wishes,
James Cutmore

Part-time ex-Oxford lecturers

text of a letter to an academic

I wonder if you know anyone who knows the Principal of Ripon Theological College, which is in Cuddesdon and fairly near to where we live?

The inflation continues to make it more difficult than it has always been to be even minimally productive in this incipient academic institution. Whatever the official figures may suggest, many of the types of expenditure which we face seem to have risen significantly in price over the last couple of years.

It would be helpful if we could alleviate the constrictive pressures by supplementing our incomes as part-time or temporary lecturers or tutors at university level. Three of the people here now have Oxford doctorates – two of them former Oxford college lecturers – and between us we cover a wide range of topics, including statistics, mathematics, accounting, psychology, philosophy and history of religion.

I do not know what areas are included in the courses provided by Ripon College, but it is likely that they include several in which somebody here could function as a tutor or lecturer. If the Principal of Ripon College knew about us, he might realise that we could provide a fill-in if there was a temporary absence or breakdown of some present lecturing arrangement. We could also act as temporary lecturers for Oxford University or for Oxford Brookes University, but these could only be very temporary on account of the travelling.

However, if a student in the Oxford area were having difficulties with his work and could drive himself into Cuddesdon for tutorials, it might be very significantly to his benefit to do so.

We should like our availability in these capacities to be known about on the academic network.

A cruel pretence

There is a cruel pretence that the outcast professor (me) is not suffering from being deprived of an institutional (i.e. hotel) environment and social recognition as a leading intellectual, that is to say as a person with a salaried and prestigious professorship.

When I was thrown out fifty years ago I accepted that there was a brick wall in front of me and that all I could do was scrape at it, trying to make a tunnel through it. Everyone promoted the fiction that I was being ‘free to follow my interests’. This was the worst possible slander of someone in my terrible position, because it represented me as not needing help in the form of money and people, or needing support for my attempts to get such help.

How do you suppose it feels, after fifty years of totally unrewarding toil in bad circumstances, trying to work towards an institutional (hotel) environment and an Oxbridge professorship, to be told by a philosopher at Somerville College that, if I got back onto a salaried career track which could lead to a professorship, I would be ‘less free’! It feels like the most violent possible rejection of all that constitutes one’s individuality. The worst insult possible, to add to grievous injury. And she (the philosopher), and many others at Somerville, have slandered and even libelled me in this terrible way.

There should be recognition of this as a criminal act with a legal penalty. Suitable redress would be that she should be condemned to come and work in my incipient and downtrodden independent university, doing whatever she can most usefully do, probably helping with the domestic and menial necessities which arise from the lack of staff from which I am always suffering grievously. Also she should forfeit her assets to contribute towards the funding that I need to build up the capital endowment of my university, which is still too painfully squeezed for me to be able to make use of my ability to do anything.

In fact, of course, the negative consequences to her and the other dons at Somerville from slandering and libelling me in this way are nil. Instead, they are able to go on enjoying their advantages, and no doubt talk about helping the ‘underprivileged’ – while doing nothing to alleviate the bad condition of someone for whose downfall they were in part responsible.

This is an edited version of the text of a letter to an academic, first posted in 2007.

’People of any age are invited to come to Cuddesdon, near Oxford, initially as voluntary workers. They are expected to have enough money of their own to pay for accommodation near here, but would be able to use our canteen facilities. While here, they could gain information about topics and points of view suppressed in the modern world, as well as giving badly needed help to our organisation. From this initial association a permanent, full- or part-time career could develop.’ Celia Green, DPhil

‘We hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. We make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

Letter about my Professorship applications

text of a letter

Dear ...

I attach herewith a copy of a letter which I have been sending to members of electoral committees when I apply for Oxford and Cambridge Professorships, for which I am not shortlisted.

I hope the letter will go some way to explaining how I got into a social position so bad that it not only arouses hostility against myself, but is liable also to arouse hostility against anyone, such as Dr Charles McCreery, who attempts to give me any support.

Modern education is geared against exceptional ability, which is how I came to be thrown out without a research scholarship at the end of my ruined ‘education’.

I went on, nevertheless, trying to return to an academic career by proceeding to do research independently, and this was seen as seditious, in the sense of implicitly questioning the meaningfulness of my rejection by society, and hence suggesting to the world at large that such acceptance or rejection was not the sole criterion of merit or ability.

copy of letter to members of Electoral Boards

Dear Professor [...],

I am writing to you as you are a member of the Electoral Board for the Professorship of [...].

I applied for the post in [...] and was informed later that I had not been shortlisted.

It is likely that my application was put in the ‘reject’ pile (on account of my age and other factors) before you read it. In which case I need to fully explain my situation to you.

I was a precocious child. I was reading books at the age of two; and given my extreme precocity, it was both cruel and unreasonable to expect my education to consist of taking about the normal number of exams at about the usual age. The post-war legislation which prohibited the taking of any exams at all until after the 16th birthday had a particularly terrible effect on my life. I therefore took many fewer exams and at much later ages than I could and should have done.

My life was one of agonised frustration and deprivation. I did not get to university until far too late an age, by which time I was too old and had been suffering for too long to take any interest in the process of taking a first degree. My college continued to apply the policy of refusing to accept that any problems which arose from a retarded education needed to be taken into account.

Recently people have been suing the educational system for providing them with inadequate skills and qualifications. I should have been able to sue for being left with no paper qualification with which to enter the academic career which, in view of my ability and aptitudes, I needed to have.

I did not accept that I could have any other sort of career or that life would be tolerable without a career.

In spite of my lack of paper qualifications I was perfectly well able to teach or do research in several subjects, so that the lack of a paper qualification and of support from my college was the only reason for my not applying for appointments teaching e.g. maths or physics.

My only motive in everything I did was to effect return to a full-time academic career as quickly as possible. The research I did was not determined by considerations of interest to myself but by what I could get funding for.

It may be considered that I was ill-advised to attempt to do research in what would be, even if accepted, a new area of academic work, as a means of returning to an academic career. In fact I was not advised at all, as my college refused to give any consideration to my need to work my way back to a university career. Whatever advice I had been given I would, in my desperate situation, have been forced to work on anything for which I could get funding.

There appears to be a social convention that a person is not subjected to suffering and hardship by being deprived of a career, however high their IQ and however great their temperamental need to put their drive and effort into a progressive situation. Anything they do in exile is supposed to have been done because of a particular interest in it. Neither of these things has been true in my case. My life without a career has been one of severe hardship and deprivation and the increasing desperation of my urgent need to return to a university career has caused me agonising frustration for many years past.

It is these difficulties that have prevented me from applying to return to an academic career at an earlier age (any applications I did make being turned down) so I must ask that my age be not held against me since I have made the best progress I could. So far as I am concerned I am just in the position of someone in their early twenties attempting to start on a full-time, full-length academic career.

It is an indication of the oppressiveness of modern society that nobody considers it their business to enquire into the predicament of the victims of social outrage perpetrated by the educational and academic systems, and to support them in recovering from it.

A form of help which you could certainly give me would be money. Without a salary, and having to provide myself with an institutional environment as best I can, it is almost impossible for me to write books expressing my views, to publish those which have already been written and stockpiled, or to carry out any of the research which I have now been prevented from doing for several decades, and which I need to do to enhance my claim on restoration to the sort of career I which I should have been having all along.

This is a standing invitation to you or any senior academic to come to visit me at my impoverished independent university, to discuss ways of supporting me, morally or financially, so that I do not continue to be prevented from contributing to the intellectual life of my time, as a headmistress (who perhaps lost her job for the crime of allowing me to be too happy at her school) once said that I was certain to do.

However, I am not inviting you or anyone else to come without warning, and an appointment would have to be made well in advance, and accompanied by a donation of at least £5000 towards the support of my institution, or to me personally. In fact, it would be better if made to me personally, as our affairs are too constricted and under-staffed to accept any additional burden in the way of processing and accounting for donations.

Yours sincerely,
etc.

Sedition

Things are often defined somewhat differently in modern English dictionaries, by comparison with dictionaries published earlier.

“Sedition”, for example, is defined in Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary (mid-century version) as

insurrection; public tumult; vaguely, any offence against the state short of treason

In the current Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, “sedition” is:

actions or speech urging rebellion against the authority of a state or ruler

It is clear that on the later definition I have not been able to avoid being seditious, since I was attempting to do research without having been selected by society to have the cachet of authorisation to do so. Why was I attempting this? Because I had been rejected by society. So either there was something wrong with the system which had rejected me, or there was something wrong with me which justified the system in rejecting me.

As I went on trying to do research without being socially authorised to do so, I was implicitly asserting that there was something wrong with the system which had rejected me, and that it was right and proper for someone in my position to act against the wishes of that system. Hence I was being seditious in the modern sense of the word.

This, I suppose, accounts for my having been treated as a criminal from the start, and continuing to be so treated to the present day. Practically everybody will immediately jump to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me, and not something wrong with the system.

When I met General McCreery (the only time I did) he said “Could we not get the University to accept us working under their supervision?” I said that, at present, the areas in which we were proposing to work were not recognised by the University but that we hoped to do research which would gain recognition, so that perhaps later we might aspire to status within the university system. I said that we had thought of seeking university affiliation straight away, but that we did not think it would be possible unless some senior person made an approach on our behalf, which no one was doing.

Apparently this did not satisfy General McCreery, and later he said to Charles that we should seek to become subordinate to the university before attempting to raise money to finance the research. Clearly he thought that we should actively refrain from doing anything that might fail to be approved of.

The General did not add that if Charles continued to support me in my attempts to raise money, he (Charles) would himself be regarded as a reprobate and an outlaw, whom it was right to slander and disinherit. However, in practice that was how the General proceeded to treat him.

The psychological syndrome requiring the subordination of ability to socially conferred status is evidently extremely strong, although not openly expressed. Several people, other than the General, had expressed the view that since I and my associates were attempting the impossible in setting up an independent academic organisation, it would be kindest to put an end to our suffering as soon as possible, while actively choking off support that we seemed about to secure.

In a similar way, General McCreery advised Charles, as if benevolently, that it would be impossible for us to succeed, and proceeded to ensure that it would be, by using his position as a Patron and ostensible supporter to disseminate hostility, and by impoverishing Charles and bringing about his exile from the social class of which he had previously been a normally acceptable member.

* * *

At the time of my conversation with the General, I had not published anything which was overtly critical of the prevailing collectivist ideology. I was treated as a criminal only on account of the seditious attitudes implied by my continuing to attempt to make a career in academic research despite having been rejected by my Oxford college. This, as may be seen, was apparently considered to be bad enough.

Since that time, I and my associates have published criticisms of various aspects of the modern collectivist ideology. My blog is one of those which have been blocked by China, presumably because China wishes to shield its population from any awareness that such critical attitudes are possible.

Although less explicit, the attitude to any expression of our views has been the same in the West. Our books are given as little publicity as possible, and we are treated as if we do not exist. Thus, although our books must have reached the attention of a wide readership, no financial or other advantage reaches us, of the sort which might make possible further publication, or intellectual activity of any kind.

No sympathy for the victims of socialism

This is something I drafted a long time ago but did not send because of lack of staff, money, and everything else that makes life tolerable.

copy of a letter to a senior academic

As the oppressive state closes in, there are protesters against capitalism camped outside St Paul’s, and a good deal of sympathy with them is expressed in many quarters.

I hope I shall be able to fit in writing something in praise of capitalism, since it has actually been the only positive factor in my life, and those who wish to abolish capitalism are wishing to destroy the chances of people who are in any way like me.

When I was thrown out at the end of the ruined education I bought the Financial Times and thought all day about how many sixpences I was adding to my capital (by not spending from my daily spending allowance) and how much capital I would need for the very smallest residential college with dining hall facility and ancillary staff.

But, slow and painful though it was, the accumulating coins did me far more good in the long run than the efforts I made to get a postgraduate degree with the grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. At the end of it the way into any university career channel was still blocked, and no financial support was available from any quarter until the King money, which enabled me to do introductory surveys in various areas which I had identified as having potentialities for research while I was doing the BLitt.

But again, this left me empty-handed. When the King money ended, our books still had to be published at our own expense, being blocked by those regarded as experts, to whom prestigious publishers referred them. So I still had no academic salary and no income from books.

Once you have been exiled from society, you should not suppose that it will be possible to return to a normal position in life by doing the same sort of research, and publishing the same sort of books, that you might have done as a socially accepted academic. Throwing money at the problem will not help, as I found. If you use your own money to publish a book, and even if you get it published under a respectable imprint, it will not change your position. You are still known to be a statusless outcast.

Publishing with your own money is ‘vanity publishing’, with which several people have taunted me, and no one has shown the slightest willingness to consider that a book might be a demonstration of one’s grievous misplacement, since if you can produce a book at all in such circumstances, surely it might be regarded as an indication that you could be producing far more if reinstated in a normal career providing salary, status and a hotel environment. This appeared not even to be considered when I was told that my book was still the ‘most referenced’ book in the field of ‘research’ in universities which had arisen since its publication.

The research which we had done with the King money withered on the vine, so far as we were concerned, while providing opportunities for overseas salaried academics, who made no progress that I would myself have regarded as significant.

I would, of course, have been quite willing to do research as pointless as theirs, so long as I was provided with equivalent salary, status and ancillary conditions. I could have undertaken to do only what other people might have thought of doing, but I would certainly have done it more efficiently.

The house in the Banbury Road continued to increase in value over the decades, and we continued to acquire experience of investment so far as our very small capital permitted.

So you can see that it is only capitalism that has ever done me any good, and my attempts to ‘prove my worth’ to senior academics by doing work to a high standard in bad conditions have done me no good at all.

Mansion tax, pensions and ruined educations

text of a letter to an academic

I have had to attempt to claw my way back to a tolerable life after the ruin of my career and family life caused by the so-called ‘education’. And I have had to do this in a society ever more dominated by the ideology that was responsible for causing the ruin in the first place.

Ever more damaging legislation is continually proposed, and the relevant departments of my suppressed and censored independent university are virtually silenced, while the unexamined assumptions continue to flood the television and the newspapers.

Now they propose a ‘mansion tax’ which, once instituted, will no doubt soon become a garden shed tax.

While trying to build up my capital assets to a level that could support even the skimpiest residential college and research department, with live-in domestic and caretaking staff, my only asset was the fact that principal private residences were free of tax (though not of maintenance costs.)

I still have not reached a level at which even the smallest scale of research could be done – not, at any rate, research that would have any hope of enhancing my claim on a salaried university appointment, although I suppose there are a few people who are willing to regard as research the collecting of anecdotes and the writing down of their dreams in the morning, and it has been convenient to suppose that I was one of them. But progress towards an adequate scale of operation would have been severely hampered by any form of ‘wealth’ tax, including tax on property. And progress has been, even without that, agonisingly slow.

Commentators always talk as if, after the age regarded as pensionable, a person could not ‘need’ more than one room to live in. But there may be people other than those here whose careers were ruined by the hostility which their ability provoked, and who, like us, need to build up their resources to the point where they can finance their own careers.

There is no reason to suppose that any society could provide each individual with opportunities exactly tailored to his needs. It is far more important that there should be the possibility for individuals to work towards providing themselves with the circumstances they need for the sort of career they need to have.

In the Britain of Frederic Myers a fair proportion of those with the highest IQs had the circumstances they needed for a productive intellectual life, provided mainly by inheritance. This proportion has been steadily reduced.

As I have mentioned before, you could alleviate our position significantly by buying a nearby house in which, among other things, new provisional associates could live; it being impossible for them to find rented accommodation, even at inordinate expense, and it being impossible for us, at the present time, to sink a high proportion of our available capital in buying additional houses.

Appealing for help is not illogical

How can it be that I complain of the lack of support for my work? Well, of course, lack of support for ‘my work’ is lack of support for me in the most basic sense, and there has been a plentiful lack of support, to the point of active opposition and obstruction.

When I was at school (at a school which I was forced to attend against my will, having told my parents at the end of the first day that it was a place to leave instantly) a hostile headmistress said to me that it would be good for me not to be treated as an exception. In the sense of being given no help in learning more languages than other people. I thought even then, with very limited information about what was going on behind my back, that while I might not be being treated as an exception in the sense of being provided with opportunity, I surely was in the sense of being the object of the storms of slanders which raged around me.

People tend to dislike my use of the word ‘slander’ in this context, and soften it to ‘gossip’. But in retrospect it is clear that its effects on my life, and on the lives of my parents, were extremely damaging.

Thrown out at the end of the ruined ‘education’ with no usable qualification with which to apply for a grant or salaried appointment in any subject, I was extremely fortunate to be led to the Society for Psychical Research, where I took a temporary job to help finance my return to Oxford at the start of the next academic year in the autumn. There, without research grant, salary, or income support from social security, I intended to pursue my researches in theoretical physics, to the extent that was possible in such painfully impoverished circumstances.

As my work would not be officially recognised as such, I would not have a supervisor (which is necessary for the eventual grant of a D.Phil), but I imagined vaguely that I would send some of my work from time to time to the Physics Department, to let them know that I existed.

At the SPR, however, I found that I would be regarded as eligible for, and would be supported in applying for, the Perrott Research Studentship – a postgraduate grant from Trinity College, Cambridge, a college with which the SPR had strong historical connections.

This was a way in which I could return to Oxford to do postgraduate work with the support of a grant instead of without any financial support at all, so I resolved to stay on at the SPR throughout the next academic year to see whether I could get the Studentship. If I did not, I would return to Oxford anyway and carry out my original plan of doing freelance research on theoretical physics, on my own and in poverty. The money saved during the extra year away from Oxford would at least provide an absolute minimum of financial support; by that time it might pay for a year’s rent on a cheap room.

In fact I was successful in my application for the Perrott Studentship, and had to consider what were the areas of potential research that could be considered as meeting their terms of reference, and would be most likely to lead to results that would gain academic recognition and re-entry to a salaried academic career.

In whatever subject I was making my salaried career, which implied aiming at becoming a Professor and head of a department in that subject as soon as possible, the salary would provide me with sufficiently liveable conditions (I thought and hoped) to be able to get something out of doing research on my own in theoretical physics, and also out of writing some of the books which I felt an internal pressure to produce. There would, at best, be far too much pressure on my time for life to be comfortable. I would have to aim at the fastest possible career advancement, and by the time I was a Professor perhaps there would be enough space for productivity in my life to allow for some sense of well-being.

I use the expression ‘career’ and ‘career advancement’ to convey to people what would be involved in practice, but I had never really thought of an academic career below Professorial level as a career in its own right at all, but only as an unfortunate preliminary to my real life as a Professor, the necessity for this preliminary having been forced upon me by the ruined ‘education’. If my ‘education’ had not been ruined, and Oxford University had not been hostile, I would have expected to become a Professor immediately on leaving Somerville.

I should perhaps also make the point that I did not regard the sort of ‘research’ under supervision that was necessary to gain higher degrees as ‘research’ at all. This was another preliminary which society set in one’s way to delay the start of a real life. I had been shocked to discover what went into getting a D.Phil qualification, which one would apparently have to do before entering upon real life, ‘real life’ meaning being free to reconstruct theoretical physics, while living in a hotel environment.

I did not discuss with anyone how little time would be left over from doing what was necessary to earn my salary and work for career advancement, even when I had re-entered a university career by obtaining a salaried appointment, as this was some years in the future, even after being awarded the Perrott Studentship. Nevertheless I suppose some awareness of the constrictions of such a situation entered into Somerville’s extraordinary assertions that, without a research grant or a salaried appointment, I was ‘free to follow my interests’.

When, many years later, I had an interview with a Somerville Fellow in Philosophy, to find out whether my D.Phil in Philosophy would induce them to let me have a salaried appointment, I was amazed that she could assert that I would be ‘less free’ if I had to meet the demands of such an appointment. So I would be ‘more free’, in her eyes, if I continued to live with no source of income.

It is apparently a standard piece of modern ideology that the income which may be derived from an academic career is inconsiderable, and that no money is necessary for staying physically alive, let alone staying alive in circumstances permitting intellectual activity. Nor is money apparently necessary for what counts as actual research ‘work’. Hence people can talk about ‘supporting my work’ as a peripheral frill, the absence of which should not lead to any complaint.

I remember one conversation with a salaried academic, similar to many others, at an international convention on lucid dreams at London University. I said I was unable to get support to take further my research on lucid dreams, or any other topic. ‘Oh, well’, she said. ‘There is no support. I can’t get any either. I have just given up on trying to.’ This person was a salaried academic in America, possibly deriving many advantages and facilities, as well as salary and status, from her university position. Subsequent to the publication of my book, she had become well known for her work on lucid dreams, although probably without ever receiving direct support for that purpose.

I, on the other hand, had produced the book on lucid dreams, on which her work had been based, as an unsalaried and statusless person, implicitly applying for the necessary funding to make further progress in this new area of research. She could, it would appear, see no difference between her own need for support and mine. Like all other academics who have worked and published in the field of lucid dreams, she made no response to my appeal on my website for contributions of £1,000 a year from every salaried academic who had worked in this field.

If someone recognises, as I do, that human nature contains little in the way of genuine altruism, it does not follow that it is illogical for them to complain about their position. It could be argued that complaining is, or should be, dependent on whether one is objectively suffering, rather than on what society happens to regard as worthy of complaint. However, the fact that the present society claims to be interested in ability, and purports to have a system designed to reward those with high IQs, is liable to heighten any bitterness one may feel about one’s position.

Accommodation wanted

copy of a post to our Facebook group:

There are some people who express enthusiasm for such books and research as we have been able to produce. In fact we have produced only a very small fraction of what should have been possible if we had been less rigorously deprived of support.

If anyone’s enthusiasm for our books and research extends to wishing to see more of either produced, we would appreciate it if they would think how they could give us some financial or practical support, or encourage others to do so.

One way in which people could help would be by buying or renting properties near to us in Cuddesdon (on the outskirts of Oxford with an Oxford postcode).

We are very cramped for space and extra space would be used either for offices or for accommodating visiting voluntary workers or potential supporters.

If a house or apartment were bought outright rather than rented it could either remain in the buyer’s name or be donated to one or more of us.

Currently the following large house is on the market, which is sufficiently close to us to be very useful: The Mill, Cuddesdon, guide price £1,650,000.

There are currently two other, smaller, houses in Cuddesdon on the market for renting, at £1200 per calendar month and £800 p.c.m. respectively. The former is more spacious and would come close to significantly relieving our problems.

Another way in which people can help us is by coming as visiting workers or supporters, but in this case the problem of accommodation arises, and it would be desirable for them to be able to pay for this during their visit, also to be running a car if possible, as the accommodation might not be very near to us.

Notes on my CV

Herewith the ‘Notes on my CV’ referred to in the previous post.

In interpreting a CV it is normal to consider only what a person has been permitted by society to do as evidence of what they are able to do. However, in my case I have to ask for the realities of the situation to be considered, as my life has consisted of being artificially prevented from doing what I could have been doing very well and wanted to be doing.

Given my extreme precocity, it was both cruel and unreasonable to expect my education to consist of taking about the normal number of exams at about the usual age. The post-war legislation which prohibited the taking of any exams at all until after the 16th birthday had a particularly terrible effect on my life. I therefore took many fewer exams and at much later ages than I could and should have done.

My life was one of agonised frustration and deprivation. I did not get to university until far too late an age, by which time I was too old and had been suffering for too long to take any interest in the process of taking a first degree. My college continued to apply the policy of refusing to accept that any problems which arose from a retarded education needed to be taken into account.

Recently people have been suing the educational system for providing them with inadequate skills and qualifications. I should have been able to sue for being left with no paper qualification with which to enter the academic career which, in view of my ability and aptitudes, I needed to have.

I did not accept that I could have any other sort of career or that life would be tolerable without a career.

In spite of my lack of paper qualifications I was perfectly well able to teach or do research in several subjects, so that the lack of a paper qualification and of support from my college was the only reason for my not applying for appointments teaching e.g. maths or physics.

My only motive in everything I did was to effect return to a full-time academic career as quickly as possible. The research I did was not determined by considerations of interest to myself but by what I could get funding for.

It may be considered that I was ill-advised to attempt to do research in what would be, even if accepted, a new area of academic work, as a means of returning to an academic career. In fact I was not advised at all, as my college refused to give any consideration to my need to work my way back to a university career. Whatever advice I had been given I would, in my desperate situation, have been forced to work on anything for which I could get funding.

There appears to be a social convention that a person is not subjected to suffering and hardship by being deprived of a career, however high their IQ and however great their temperamental need to put their drive and effort into a progressive situation. Anything they do in exile is supposed to have been done because of a particular interest in it. Neither of these things has been true in my case. My life without a career has been one of severe hardship and deprivation and the increasing desperation of my urgent need to return to a university career has caused me agonising frustration for many years past.

It is the social difficulties that have prevented me from applying to return to an academic career at an earlier age (any applications I did make being turned down) so I must ask that my age be not held against me since I have made the best progress I could. So far as I am concerned I am just in the position of someone in their early twenties attempting to start on a full-time, full-length academic career.

My CV shows that I have held a (usually unpaid) position at the Institute of Psychophysical Research for many years. Since the death of Professor Hans Eysenck, who had been Director, I have resumed the position of Director. This is not, and has never been, an alternative to an academic career. The organisation was founded by me, not as an expression of interest in any particular field of research, but as a vehicle to facilitate my return to a university career by providing an environment within which publishable research could be done. In this objective it has failed, as funding has been rigorously withheld since a seven-year covenant thirty years ago. It could be argued that, without any financial support at all, it has provided me with added liabilities to increase my sufferings rather than alleviate them.

Being deprived of a career is very like being condemned to indefinite imprisonment. One is deprived of every normal social function or interaction, of everything that could make life worth living. The horror of the situation is only marginally modified by whether or not one was actually innocent when first condemned. As it happened, I was ‘innocent’, since I was perfectly well able to fulfil the functions of an academic career.

I advocate the abolition of the state controlled educational system since, if it could ruin my education and my life, it could ruin anybody’s.

Oxford’s Professorship in Psychology

There follows the text of a letter of application which I made for a Psychology Professorship at Oxford University last year.

The ‘notes on my CV’ referred to will be posted separately.

I would draw attention in particular to the last paragraph, which for these purposes I have put in bold.

I hereby appeal to anyone in a position to provide finance for it, to consider this as an application for funding to set up a department of psychology under my direction.

I am applying for the Professorship of Psychology being offered by the Department of Experimental Psychology in association with Magdalen College, as advertised in the University Gazette, and attach my CV, which includes the contact details of three referees, together with notes on my CV and a testimonial from the late Professor H J Eysenck.

As my position is an anomalous one, I would be grateful if you could read the notes on my CV, as they give information about how I came to be in this position. As you will see, my CV is one that was prepared to go with an application for an appointment in philosophy, rather than psychology. I cannot in fact comply with all the ‘essential’ criteria listed on the website. However, I can comply with some of them. You will note on my CV that I have carried out research in psychology. It was pioneering research which broke new ground in various areas, but for which I received little recognition (more overseas than in this country) and no funding after the initial (very minimal) funding had lapsed. I also have decades of administrative and fund-raising experience.

I am in fact capable of carrying out research, teaching, and administration in areas in which I do not have paper qualifications, owing to my own ability to learn new topics very fast and very thoroughly in any situation in which I need to learn them.

For realistic information about my life, abilities, and situation, please see the Preface ‘How this Book came to be Written’ to my book The Lost Cause, a copy of which I am sending to you under separate cover. (This is the book version of my Oxford D.Phil thesis on causation entitled Causation and the Mind-Body Problem.)

I apologise for the anomalies in my application: these arise from the extreme social misplacement which has resulted from my ruined education. There is no recognition of the predicament of the exiled academic. I am making this application in spite of being above the normal age for a Professorship because the process of recovering from a ruined education is extremely slow, in fact there is no provision for it to be possible at all. There was a time lag of decades before the work which I had done in exile from an academic career led to my being offered testimonials from senior academics who were willing to act as my referees, and this still did not lead to my reinstatement in a normal academic career.

After still further delay, one of the areas of work which I had initiated (lucid dreaming) came to be recognised as a suitable topic for doctorates in both philosophy and experimental psychology. I still did not have funding for the expenses of research including a research assistant, without which I could not have done a DPhil in experimental psychology, so I applied instead to do one in philosophy.

The enclosed notes can give little impression of what I would have achieved by now if I had had a normal life, i.e. one that was normal for a person like me. As it is, they are a statement of how efficiently the expression of my abilities has been prevented by the society in which I have been living. Academics advising me have often said, ‘Don’t say anything about your ability, only about what you have done’, and ‘Don’t mention your unofficial teaching and research.’ But society can prevent one from doing anything officially, i.e. within a normal academic position. Is what one does outside its auspices, in an attempt to regain reinstatement, automatically to be regarded as disqualified from consideration?

Since I have had to work outside of a normal university context in attempting to establish a claim to reinstatement, it is difficult for me to give any academic referees at all. Nevertheless I give such as I can, and it should be considered remarkable that I have managed to acquire any at all. At one time I was sent a portfolio of testimonials from North American academics, who had worked on lucid dreams in some of the ways suggested in my book Lucid Dreams, similar to the testimonial from Professor Harry Hunt which appears on page xxxviii of my book The Lost Cause. However, these never did me any good and I have mislaid them, so it would be a lot of work to find out the present addresses of those concerned.

I give the referees I do, as best I can, because it should be regarded as amazing, and highly creditable, that I am able to give any at all. However I expect that my referees will observe the usual conventions that (a) one’s case is not to be considered highly anomalous and in need of redress, that (b) only work done by the holders of official academic positions counts as academic, and that (c) there is supposed to be no such thing as ability which is transferable from one field of intellectual activity to another. Therefore they can do no more than damn me with faint praise for the few pieces of work which I have been able to do within the restrictive parameters of what is regarded as ‘relevant’.

Finally, I should like to make a statement. It may be that you reject this application out of hand, on the basis that it does not meet the ‘essential requirements’, or that I otherwise fail to fit the University’s idea of what a psychology professor ought to be like. However, it is my belief that if the University really wanted to contribute to the advancement of psychology, rather than merely occupy a prestigious role in what has developed under the label of ‘academic psychology’, it would take this application very seriously indeed.

No better way of saying it

Someone recently wrote the following to me:

I guess the fact that you insist that you should have a different social position than the one you actually have makes people more negative towards you. As you have written many times, insisting on this is taboo since it is supposed that society is fair and puts everyone in their appropriate place. Perhaps you could do better if you communicated the issue differently. Of course, this is a tricky question, since it might involve some degree of dishonesty, which is inherently undesirable.

This was my reply:

How to express the discrepancy between my actual and my natural social position is not merely a tricky question but has always been an unavoidable and insoluble one. It is omnipresent so I may as well write more about it, not that this will lead to any acceptance of the realities of my position.

I am afraid that whether or not I make it explicit, hostility is automatically aroused by the discrepancy between my outcast position and the position I need to be in and should be in.

At least, one supposes that it is the violation of the taboo by my being as I am (whether or not I mention it explicitly) that arouses the hostility, since the hostility takes the form – among other things – of actively imposing misinterpretations upon me according to which I am in a suitable and tolerable position and do not need any help in working my way back towards one which is more appropriate and less intolerable.

It may be supposed that my alienated position in society arose in the first place as a result of the more fundamental hostility to my being precocious and likely to break new ground in any area in which I got the opportunity to do anything.

In fact, I was seen as a threat, but I was not aware of it. I did not at that stage have a view of myself as being more likely than other people to question the unexamined assumptions which usually dominate the way everyone thinks.

However, for whatever reason, my education was mismanaged – or from other people’s point of view, very well managed – so as to drive me inexorably to the disaster of exile. Confronting the horrors of life outside of a high-flying university career, I found that no one would even consider letting me remedy my position by taking degrees in other subjects as rapidly as possible and at my own expense so as to have a qualification that might be usable for entering a suitable career. If I had been permitted to do this I would not have been totally ineligible for income support when deprived of an income. If I had had a First in physics or chemistry, or even in a language, I could have been eligible for support as someone applying for university lectureships.

But having achieved their objective of throwing me out with a second-class degree in maths (a subject which I would never myself have considered, although there were many in which I would have considered taking degrees and making university careers) the powers that be were not going to allow me to escape from disaster at one bound.

And no doubt they were horrified that I did find a way of getting a postgraduate grant from Trinity College, Cambridge, although that did not, in itself, make me eligible for university appointments in any subject.

When my way was again blocked at the end of the Trinity College studentship, I was back in the position of ineligibility for support of the most minimal kind from the Welfare State, since I was not (without support from my college or supervisor) qualified for the kinds of jobs I would have been able to do.

I could only have been eligible for unemployment benefit by being dishonest enough to pretend I was applying for jobs as a schoolteacher, as my college wished me to do. No doubt there are many drawing the dole who have no intention of taking up the jobs for which they apply, but I was sure that, however many people do this without comment, I would be likely to be found out and persecuted, and anyway I set too much store by keeping my mind clear of social dishonesties.

You suggest that communicating the difficulties of my position differently might be better. But actually there could be nothing to communicate if I suppressed my need for a university career, since I have no interest in any field of research except for its potentialities for career advancement.

There is no point in saying that there are great potentialities for the advancement of science in a certain area if one cannot actually do anything in that area on account of poverty and social degradation.

There are a few people around who claim to find some aspect of parapsychology ‘interesting’ without doing anything about it, and maybe come up with vague ‘theories’, such as that ESP has been influential in evolution, but I do not understand people who think like that.

Hopping mad

copy of a letter

You said I was ‘hopping mad’ about the item in the paper about rubbishy ‘research’ on out-of-the-body experiences (OBEs) being done by the British Psychological Society and others.

Yes, but you should stop to think why I am infuriated by such things. People would like to think it was because such topics ‘interest’ me in some way that is independent of my financial position. Actually I react strongly to those things and to any reports of money being spent to set up university departments, research centres of various kinds, etc. because money is so important. I know it, and unfortunately the enemy knows it, in the negative sense.

People like to talk as though ‘doing research’ or ‘being interested in some particular subject’ was independent of the circumstances of life, e.g. a hotel environment with caretakers, housekeepers and so forth.

But it certainly is not so in my case and I can’t hope to achieve the energy level that makes life worth living until I have a residential college environment with residential staff. Until I have it, what matters most to me is working towards it, i.e. increasing my capital.

So what infuriates me about people doing rubbishy research on OBEs etc. is that they have at least salaries, and that all my efforts to demonstrate the existence of fields of research in which I might work has resulted only in providing nominal topics for people already provided with salary and status (perhaps not all magnificently, but at any rate more than me).

As I was thrown out of the university system, I know that I need a lot of money to provide myself with an equivalent institutional environment. Perhaps I would not know this if I had not accidentally had a good time at one point in my life which gave me an awareness of what life could and should be. But I only know how good it could be for me, not for anybody else.

Egalitarianism means that a person has no socially recognised right to live in a way determined by his individual characteristics. If I say anything explicit to the effect that my life, and perhaps that of other people with high IQs, was easily ruined because teachers and other social agents could easily override, or be genuinely unaware of, unusual requirements which arose from, or were associated with, unusual ability, I have observed that my interlocutor is moved to noises of active rejection. Usually when I say things implicitly critical of the ideology, people let it wash over them without reply, and one knows the implications will be lost on them. But in this case they seem to have to assert their definite belief that no exceptional requirements could possibly be associated with exceptional ability.

As the headmistress of the terrible state school I briefly attended said, it would be good for me not to be treated as an exception. But, as I thought at the time, how could that be, since I was exceptional?

I am not actually hopping mad about not being able to do research in any particular field; I am hopping mad all the time about not being able to get money.

It is really a terrible waste of my ability that I have to apply it to making enough money merely to keep physically alive without, as yet, having been able to buy for myself the minimal circumstances of a liveable life.

The Duke of Edinburgh and others

My colleague Fabian Tassano has put some comments about the Duke of Edinburgh on his blog, and I am reminded of his correspondence with us. We thought that he, if anybody, should be able to think that the most statusful agents of the collective might be in the wrong, and that a status-less person, even if slandered and vilified, might need and deserve support, which they were unable to get from the ‘proper’ social sources, and that this could only be given them by independent-minded individuals.

Indeed, a descendant of the European nobility might feel that he had a responsibility to support those who were attempting to maintain the standards achieved by an intellectual golden age against the ravages of the encroaching tribalism.

And, one would think, such a person might, if not wishing to be openly associated with social outcasts such as intellectual dissidents, have available to him channels by which he could arrange for financial support to reach those who represented old-fashioned ideals and enable them to be more of an influence within the turbulence of modern society. Also one would imagine, such a person might communicate with other individuals who could approach those he wished to help, as if out of the blue, and become the moral and financial supporters they so sorely needed.

But, as it happened, Prince Philip did none of these things, and nor has any other wealthy and influential person to whom we have appealed over the decades and who appeared to take some interest in us. Nor have any of these people given help in their own right in the form of a donation. It seems to be accepted as a law of the Medes and Persians that we are never to be given any real help at all, in the form of money, in the form of useful work or moral support in fundraising, or in the form of suitable university appointments.

I find the meanness towards us of the most wealthy and influential hard to understand. In their position, if I had corresponded with or interviewed a person evidently claiming to be badly in need of support to do something they could clearly see how to do, I could not myself send them away, or terminate the correspondence, without sending them at least a few thousand pounds as a consolation prize and reward for the time and trouble they had put into presenting their case to me.

On the other hand, of course, those who opposed us did so covertly, and with great effect. Our most ostentatious nominal ‘supporters’ would network against us widely and indefatigably, ensuring that no useful help would reach us from any source. And the effects of this networking were permanent. Once it was known that we were personae non gratae with other members of the international establishment, there was no way in which such information could be forgotten or revised.

As those of Prince Philip’s generation die out, our chances of finding a supporter become even more negligible, as we have only ever had even lukewarm support from those born well before the onset of the Welfare State in 1945, who have at least some memory of the standards and ideals in the early decades of the last century.

Cottage to let

Copy of letter to an academic

There is a cottage to rent fairly near us, and this might make more concrete the idea that well-wishers (if we had any) could rent or buy such a place as a retirement home/second home/vacation home, so that they could come and make contact with us, either with them providing moral support or practical help for our plans of expansion, or with us playing the role of financial and social advisors for a consultancy fee.