Institutionalised opposition

copy of a letter

Further to my previous comments, even if I had not taken up the grammar school scholarship at 10 and had simply worked straight away for degrees, there would still have been the incalculable and ever-present risk of notice being taken of me by the local ‘education’ authority. So far as I can gather, in the 1945 Education Act, local authorities were given powers of inspection and interference over the ‘education’ of everyone, whether at private or state schools, or at home. This would have been a time-bomb for me which might have blown up at any time.

What I found so disgusting at the time (when I was 16) was that I was not only no longer in receipt of a grammar school scholarship but was past school-leaving age, so I do not see that they had any right at all to enquire into my affairs or to discuss them with my father.

Now, not only is the school-leaving age higher than it was then, but it is being proposed that until the age of 18 the local authority should have the power to make everyone do something approved of by them, some kind of officially recognised ‘training’, etc.

This is an absolutely terrible idea, and only compete abolition of the concept of compulsory education, including the concept of the powers (explicit and implicit) of local education authorities could restore an acceptable situation.

As could be seen in my case, they had, even at so early a stage in the development of the Oppressive State, no scruples about uninvited invasion into the life of someone over whom they had no official jurisdiction.

In fact it may very well have been the unprincipled Mother Mary Angela, the nun who taught maths, who set them onto me when I was on the verge of making a bid for freedom. I remember how she reacted when I told her of my plans to get on with taking degrees as fast as possible. Very similar, really, to Sir George Joy’s reaction when I said that if he prevaricated any longer about the Coombe-Tennants buying a house for me I would buy one myself, although a smaller one than they had been planning to buy for me. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said, with something like fear or apprehension, and Mother Mary Angela said something similar on being told that I could get on with taking degrees straight away.

‘Oh but I can,’ I said joyfully to Mother Mary Angela. ‘I have gone into all the regulations and I am perfectly well qualified.’ I knew she wanted to oppose me in everything I wanted but I still had not realised how dangerous it might be to let her have any information about my intentions. In fact, of course, tremendous and widespread opposition arose which obliterated my joyful hopes and condemned me to yet another year of supervised ‘preparation’ for a distant qualification.

Similarly, I suppose that Sir George feared my setting up in Oxford because, on however small a scale I was able to operate, the Oxford location would be sufficient to attract some publicity and hence the possibility of financial support. So the campaign to starve me out began, and when the King money provided partial alleviation for me, Professor Sir Alister Hardy had to be mobilised to stand in my light. Which, of course, he did very effectively, although he had no idea what to do and his ‘projects’ were only superficial and mechanical imitations of mine. I had used punched cards so he would use punched cards – or rather his employees would, when he had some. (Computers were still cumbrous and not easily available.)

It does appear (from my experience of life) that when ability is combined with drive and a strong sense of direction, it arouses opposition. So, paradoxically, although the attacks on my father which obstructed my plans always took the form of allegations that he was pushing me, they were very likely instigated by those who had the clearest perceptions of the fact that he was not doing so, such as my aunt and Mother Mary Angela. Mother Mary Angela clearly disliked the fact that I had found a way to start taking degrees, and probably all the more because it was so clearly my own autonomous idea, into researching which I had put a lot of initiative.

It is possible to imagine a hypothetical society in which my drive and independence would have aroused admiration and support, but clearly this is not a society in which I have ever lived.

Seminar

I am giving a seminar in Oxford on the 26th, entitled
"Should pensioners revolt against means-testing?".

Details here.

Seeking supporters

Copy of a letter to someone I managed to speak to (rare event)

Further to our conversation of yesterday, I thought I would like to send you a complimentary copy of my most recent book, which I hope you will accept as a gift.

If you were able to make our presence known about it would be very helpful. We are looking for supporters of every kind. We cannot really be functional in any way as an academic institution without substantial capital endowment, and it is no use our approaching billionaires etc without independent people to represent our case to them. (I have plenty of negative experience of doing so.) The only time I ever got any money I had an ex-Colonial Governor to put my case to Cecil Harmsworth King, chairman of the IPC group.

We would also like people to move nearby to give us, and one another, moral support in protesting against the infringements of liberty which have already been going on for a long time on an exponential basis.

With best wishes, etc.

Preliminary scenario 1

Each individual finds himself involved in a strange and complicated story. He cannot remember exactly how it began. If he believes what the other people in the story tell him, he is going to die, which means perhaps that he will cease being conscious of anything again. The environment in which he finds himself is one of staggering complexity. The universe of astronomy surrounds his planet, leading to no edge, but to abysses of unimaginable mathematical paradox. The earth under his feet is supposedly made of particles, the studies of which lead to no final definition of their ultimate types and characteristics, but to abysses of unimaginable mathematical paradox.

Probably there is in his home a box with a flat front which shows moving coloured pictures of his world, impressing upon him the intolerable multifariousness of all the forms of life that have ever crawled or swum or flown in the darkest and deepest, hottest and coldest, wettest and driest crevices of his planet. Again, no precise limit can be set upon their numbers, though vague estimates can be made of the number of unclassified insects of a certain type that probably remain to be found and labelled in the basin of the Amazon.

There seem to be other people in this story with him, but there is a great difference between himself and them. He is conscious of his own feelings, but only by implication and inference of theirs. Are they conscious of themselves as he is conscious of himself? If he talks to them about this they usually discourage him from thinking of such an absurd idea (but he may have read about dreams in which figures in the dream argue vigorously and mockingly with the dreamer about whether they are real). Is his the only consciousness? What is the point of all this, and does the point of it have anything at all to do with him? Is the whole universe a casual uncaused appearance, a sudden shocking bauble emerging from unbeing?

Why should it? Why should it not? What could cause such a thing? Of course his ideas of caused and uncaused break down; as usual at the edge of things his thought is mocked by the unimaginable.

Perhaps the universe is just a material thing and his consciousness only an accidental byproduct. That is to say the universe is nothing but this turbulence of forces, ultimately based upon unimaginable mathematical relationships. The turbulence has happened to produce living forms — that is, patterns of matter that are able to generate further similar patterns — and those which are of some complexity seem to themselves to be conscious. But the semblance of consciousness has no more reality than the electromagnetic field of a machine; it will stop being there when the machine stops, and the mechanical mathematical universe will go on indifferently.

Is all this his dream and will he ever awaken? Are all the people and perhaps the animals dreaming too, and is this a communal hallucination in which they are all caught? Or is he the dream, as some have suggested, of a magician or a god? If so, what are the intentions of the dreamer?

(from the forthcoming book The Corpse and the Kingdom)

Confiscating the freedom of some, in order to appropriate the freedom of others

The driving force of socialism is not to provide benefits for anyone, but to destroy individual freedom. By taxation, the state deprives individuals of freedom of action, reducing the territory within which they are able to decide for themselves how to run their affairs, and using the money from taxpayers to buy areas of freedom from other individuals.

This was very clearly shown by the way in which, at 16, I was forced to spend a very damaging year at London University instead of being left alone to take an external London degree (or degrees) with correspondence courses before going to Oxford or Cambridge.

My plans were all made — so far as they could be without some assistance in arranging the practical work that formed part of the courses in physics and chemistry — and my father had expressed willingness to pay for the correspondence courses in question.

I was offered a tutor, apparently spontaneously, by the local authority. I had made no application to them, although it is possible that a treacherous teacher at my Ursuline convent school had done so, which was beyond her rights, since I had left school and was no longer in receipt of a scholarship which might be regarded (and had been regarded) as making it other people’s business to make (and prohibit) decisions and arrangements about my affairs.

This led to an interview which left me with a clear perception that this was nothing I wanted anything to do with. But, as I now realise, the whole thing was motivated by a ravening desire to regain oppressive control of my life, from which I considered myself lucky to have escaped. My plans were aimed at helping myself, so far as was now possible, to recover from the seriously bad effects of the last three years (since being prevented from taking the School Certificate exam — usually for 16-year-olds — at 13).

The local ‘educational’ community stormed, and my father withdrew his support for my plans, making instead, and without consulting me, appalling arrangements for me to go to a college of London University. I had both a state scholarship and a County Major scholarship. The state scholarship was to be kept until I went to Oxford. So now my father, being unwilling to support me against determined opposition by people in positions of ostensible authority, applied for me to be allowed to use the County Major Scholarship to go to London University. If only they had refused! Then I could not have gone, and would have been able to revert to my former plan.

But in fact the education committee was willing to pay (with taxpayers’ money) for me to be forced to do what I did not want to do, losing my self-determination by having inflicted upon me a most horrific year, all the more damaging because it came after three previous years in which I had had no control over my life.

A member of the committee was quoted to me as saying (ironically and hypocritically), as they agreed to buy my life for a year, ‘We wouldn’t stand in her way’.

In fact it would have been better for me if I had never taken up the grammar school scholarship in the first place (aged 10) but had worked on my own to take degrees as soon as possible.

In saying that my father was not willing to support me I do not mean to be critical of him. Who would have been willing directly to oppose socially appointed authorities? It is by no means commonly done and would be extremely difficult to do. My father, for all his aristocratic genes, had been brought up as a poor boy in East Ham, suffering from every sort of neglect and insecurity. I do blame those who used their socially conferred positions of influence to pressurise him into withdrawing his support for my plans, inflicting irreparable damage on my prospects in life, reparation for which should still be regarded as due to me.

How to provoke hostility

At the last seminar I got six people, but I am afraid this may be only because the title ‘Gnosticism and Existential psychology’ contained no hint that I might be critical of modern Existentialists, such as Sartre, who are identified with the rejection of capitalism and bourgeois morality, i.e. they are identified with the destruction of civilisation by socialism.

However, I have improved my technique by making an initial exposition of my real reason for giving the seminar, to make people aware of the position of my independent university in a hostile society, and its needs for workers and supporters of all kinds. This arouses overt hostility, and some go away very quickly, but the eventual outcome from my point of view is certainly no worse than hoping I may get to talk to someone realistically at the end.

In our position, provoking the hostility to express itself openly has to be regarded as a positive achievement.

One man came early and heard the whole of this preliminary exposition. He was very hostile to the possibility that having a high IQ might mean that a person needed particular opportunities and circumstances to use it, and also that they might contribute anything useful to society which other, less intelligent people could not. He quoted the example of his great uncle (probably now dead) saying that although this uncle had a high IQ, he had not used it for anything better than creating crossword puzzles for some broadsheet newspaper, and that he hadn’t been capable of anything more even if he had had better circumstances. So this meant that having a high IQ could not ever mean that you might need better circumstances to enable you to do all the things that you were capable of, and that it could not mean that I actually needed anything more (such as a hotel environment) than I already had. He then claimed that people in general are not hostile to those with high IQs; they are just indifferent.

This man was about to waste his time (and taxpayers’ money) in Oxford starting a Masters degree in 'psychodynamics and neurolinguistics'.

He stayed a fairly long time, and when he left, he said, ‘I am off to find somebody I can do good to,’ in a rather reactive way. I replied, ‘I need someone to do good for me’. Of course he didn’t respond.

I contrasted the Gnostics with modern Existentialist philosophers, making the point that Gnosticism had been a form of Existentialism that did not lead to materialistic socialism. As I was doing so, it occurred to me that this illustrates the extreme hostility to any form of potentially centralised existential psychology that is aroused in ‘normal’ psychology. The Gnostics and the Cathars were always subject to persecution, torture and death by other Christians, and their documents suppressed, to such an extent that information about the content of the Gnostic gospels can only be gathered from what is quoted in the polemical writings of other Christians (the Gospel of Thomas being the sole exception), and information about the beliefs of the Cathars only from the records of the various inquisitions of their replies, or supposed replies, under torture.

Crowding out the opposition

Letter sent to the Chancellor of the University of Oxford

Dear Lord Patten,

I note and deplore your comments on the fund-raising campaign launched by Oxford University, allegedly to ‘give it the freedom to choose whichever students it likes’, and deplore the fund-raising campaign itself, which is only making matters even worse for my genuinely independent, even if socially unrecognised, incipient university which is realistically trying to maintain intellectual standards, or would be doing so if not kept unproductive by a rigorous lack of support.

Removing an overt and explicit pressure from the Government will do nothing to restore Oxford University to freedom from the prevailing anti-individualistic ideology which it has been instrumental in promoting. Nearly all individual academics have been discriminating for decades against genuine ability and in favour of low IQs and politically correct attitudes. I am sure that their doing so will continue, as will the decline in standards, whatever official pronouncements may be made.

Appealing for funding from sources other than the Government will only make the situation even worse for a genuinely independent university, such as ours. There are several areas of potential research in which we have been prevented from operating for several decades, those to whom we applied for funding often saying that they preferred to support work (in that nominal area or otherwise) in a university.

The implication seems to be that you cannot go wrong in supporting a socially recognised institution and, as an implicit corollary, that you should positively avoid permitting work that should be the domain of a ‘proper’ university to be done outside of one.

Why is it regarded as reprehensible to permit such work to be done outside of a ‘proper’ university ? Perhaps there is a fear that if anyone not socially recognised as the right sort of person were allowed to do anything, this might have the effect of making them appear superior to the socially accredited academics (which should not be allowed to become apparent, whether or not it is actually the case).

It is also possible that findings might be made in research which did not appear to be immediately supportive of the prevailing ideology, and work seriously critical of the productions of socially accredited academics might be published.

If more financial contributions than at present were made to Oxford University, those who might give to us to enable us to become productive would have their available resources still further reduced, in the same way that progressive impoverishment of individuals by taxation makes it less possible for them to give any support to us, even if any of them could transcend the modern ideology sufficiently to consider doing so.

Perhaps one should see in this appeal for funding by Oxford University (and perhaps by other universities) another ‘stealth tax’. One knows that the Government is struggling with its ‘need’ to increase public spending by raising taxation, when it is already at a crippling level. Encouraging universities to apply for private funding so that there is less need for Government subsidy may enable the Government, certainly not to reduce taxation, but to spend more of its resources elsewhere.

Yours sincerely, etc.

Means-testing pensioners

Pensioners, like the middle class in general, are victimised by modern legislation. The modern ideology does not accept innate differences but it does, in practice, discriminate against those with above-average IQs, and against personality characteristics associated with above-average IQs, such as conscientiousness and forethought.

The population of pensioners, whether or not classifiable as ‘middle class’, are likely to have above-average IQs, if only because they have managed to reach pensionable age. They fail to protest at the burdens imposed upon them, perhaps to some extent because, like my own parents, they are inclined to accept legal impositions without complaint.

People over 50 now constitute 43% of the voting population (this proportion is expected to rise to over 50% by 2031) and are in a position to exercise significant pressure on the political parties which wish for their electoral support.

Pensioners and prospective pensioners should never have accepted the means-testing of pensions. The effect of this policy is that those who have been so thrifty and frugal as to acquire savings, as well as making sure that they always paid the requisite annual contributions, whatever their circumstances, are being penalised so that more ‘support’ can be diverted to those who ‘need it most’, i.e. those who have made no attempt to build up independence of the state throughout their working lives.

Many of those who qualify for the supplementary ‘income support’, which would put their pension back up to the level it might be at if not means-tested, fail to claim it. They are exhorted to apply for what they are ‘entitled to’, the only reason usually suggested for their reluctance to do so being ‘pride’. But in fact they can only apply by submitting to ‘assessment’ of their circumstances by agents of the collective, who may quite well decide that it is not ‘in their interests’ to be allowed to live in their own home any longer, and they may be popped into the killing fields of the old people’s ‘homes’ whether they like it or not.

Ultimately, the state has the right to force an elderly person to live in a care home, or even to have them sectioned as a psychiatric patient. They will not be allowed the option of quietly starving or otherwise coming to grief in their own homes, which might very well be a less painful and distressing way of ending their lives than what awaits them in ‘care’.

Pensioners and their associations, such as Age Concern, Help the Aged and the National Pensioners Convention, should not tolerate means-testing. It was not regarded as acceptable in the original Pensions Act of 1911, which proposed that the pensions being set up should be paid for by contributions and would be payable to rich and poor alike.

Now Gordon Brown proposes an extra levy on salaries to ‘pay for care in old age’, in addition to compulsory pension contributions. Again, there is no way of opting out of this by saying that one will never be a drain on the state’s provision of ‘care facilities’ for the elderly, but would rather die in one’s own way in one’s own home.

‘The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which Oxford Forum could be producing fundamental critical analyses if it were provided with adequate funding. We appeal for £2m as initial funding to enable us to write and publish on this and similar issues, which are currently only discussed in the context of pro-collectivist arguments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

Leaders are socially constructed

Copy of a letter to someone I got to talk to for a couple of hours (rare occurrence!)

I have not previously encountered this alleged experimental finding which you quoted from anthropology textbooks, that if you put 20 people in a room, one ‘leader’ will always emerge with a couple of sub-leaders. If it is in anthropology textbooks I am sure that tendentious conclusions are expected to be drawn from it.

As, for example, that leadership does not depend on any individual attributes or qualities, genetic or otherwise, but may be imposed or constructed upon any individual by environmental circumstances. It is social constructionism again, depending on a profound underlying belief (or wish to believe) that there are no innate characteristics and that society can turn any sheep into a shepherd if it chooses and, even more delightfully, force any former shepherd into the position of a sheep.

So — the family court business arises, with low-IQ doctors and social workers ruling the lives of high-IQ professional people, and prescribing for how many hours per week they may see their children under supervision, etc.

It is now openly admitted that medical schools exercise positive discrimination in favour of the ‘underprivileged’, which means of course discriminating against people from successful middle-class backgrounds, and that really means discriminating against those with higher IQs and/or aristocratic ancestry.

What I would do with £10 billion

As I said in a previous piece of writing, 10 billion pounds has been spent, effectively to lower the average IQ of the undergraduate population. I would accept £10 billion without any qualms and would be sure of being able to make good use of it in applying my abilities and those of my associates to contributing to the advancement of science and contributing to the intellectual debates of the present time.

People have often asked me ‘What would I do?’ in a certain field of work and ‘How much would I need for it?’ Well, actually, I would do the best and most progressive things within the resources available, which is what I did when I went to the Society for Psychical Research, within the very restricted resources available and living in appalling circumstances (without a hotel environment). What I did was the best I could do to open up large-scale fields of research. Working on them on an adequate scale would, incidentally, have provided a hotel environment to make my life tolerable rather than intolerable, and permitted me not only to be intellectually productive but to get some sense of wellbeing out of being so.

Working within resources of £10 billion would enable adequate institutional (including hotel) facilities to be set up.

If £10 billion were given to me it would be increasing access to university life for some of those who have been deprived of it by their underprivileged early lives (exposed to the hostility of state education) and subsequent inactivity caused by poverty.

Would it not be making a better use of £10 billion to provide access to opportunity and status for people with high IQs who have been artificially deprived of them, rather than on reducing the proportion of higher IQs in the undergraduate population — and hence subsequently in the academically statusful graduate population? What is the point of spending money on that — one might ask, if one did not already know that the point of the state-financed school and university system is to disadvantage higher IQs, and to disadvantage those with the highest IQs the most.