text of a reply to a university philosophical society
Dear ...
Thank you for inviting me to speak to the ... Society. I am afraid that I will not be able to come in the foreseeable future.
I am not a member of the ‘international academic community’ to which you refer, although I certainly should be. The rejection of hereditary ability is fundamental to communist or socialist ideology, and I have never been able to overcome the handicap imposed upon me by my ruined ‘education’. I have been, and am being, prevented from making major progress in many fields.
Opposition to us expresses itself in the fact that we do not have a single senior supporter, i.e. any person outside of here, preferably with some social status, prepared to put our case in fund-raising applications. It is actually impossible to gain any financial support without a representative. We do not have one, as the nominal supporters we once had (of which there were originally a great number) offered to resign as soon as they were asked to be active on our behalf, or to contribute money themselves.
Although social status is (or would be) preferable in a supporter, anything is better than nothing. You and your colleagues may well start to have some social status in a few years’ time. If we had one or more academic supporters we could, for example, make applications to overseas universities to set up overseas departments here, so that we could give seminars in vacations on political, social and ideological developments in this country.
We are now in the summer vacation, so why do not you and/or some of your colleagues come to stay in or near Cuddesdon for six or eight weeks? You would need to be prepared to help with whatever work is in progress here, to justify our spending time on putting you in the picture in various ways. And you would need to have bicycles and/or a car to travel into Cuddesdon, as you might not be able to rent rooms close enough to us for walking.
I have put this invitation in the plural, but when we meet new people it is best if they are on their own, as a companion will be sure to reinforce or remind them of elements in the modern outlook which are incompatible with ours.
Kind regards,
etc.
Any undergraduates or academics are invited to come to Cuddesdon in vacations 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. However, we cannot enter into correspondence about arrangements before they come. 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.
04 August 2012
21 July 2012
The onward march of egalitarianism
Prior to the 1939-45 war, getting university fees paid if you, or your parents, could not afford them depended on showing remarkable academic achievement (correlated with very high IQ).
For a time, there were State Scholarships which were regarded as exceptional. They were dependent on getting several distinctions in the exam normally taken at age 18, now called A-levels (though of course quite different in intellectual difficulty from what was taken then).
I got a State Scholarship at 16, regarded as a young age. At the time there were third years of the Sixth Form, and some people stayed on at school until 19 in order to try to get State Scholarships, or at least to do well on the S-level papers. S-level (scholarship) papers were more demanding than A-level papers.
But although the State Scholarship gave me a notional cachet as compared with a County Scholarship, it did not give me (at the time I took it) any financial advantage. All those who had their university fees topped up by the state had them topped up to the same level and received the same amount to live on.
I also got the top scholarship to Somerville College, known as the Senior Open Scholarship, but this also was a cachet and no more. A fraction of my fees was paid by the college, the rest by the state.
From that time on, the number of people going to university each year increased continuously, all receiving a similar level of financial support, regardless of ability.
By now about 50% of the population attends university or similar institutions. The fees have about trebled, and those who get bursaries or subsidies are those from the poorest families, which is in fact most likely to favour the lowest IQs.
Those with the highest IQs are now at no advantage relative to any other university entrant from a middle-class family, and have to acquire enormous loans (likely to be over £50,000 for those starting in 2012) in order to complete their university courses.
Pre-Welfare State, the highest IQs were at an advantage in getting the few scholarships available; now they are bracketed with the middle class at large in being discouraged by the prospect of debt, quite apart from any discrimination practised against them during the admissions process. Debt, one may surmise, is likely to deter the higher IQs the most, as they are likely to be more forethoughtful and existentially aware.
Only those with the ‘poorest’ backgrounds will be actively encouraged by getting their fees paid, and by various ‘outreach’ strategies that are being pursued. Those with the highest IQs, who would formerly have had the best chances of State Scholarships, are unlikely to fall into this category. To have such an IQ implies at least a fairly high IQ on the part of both parents, and at least one of them is likely to have a reasonable income.
For a time, there were State Scholarships which were regarded as exceptional. They were dependent on getting several distinctions in the exam normally taken at age 18, now called A-levels (though of course quite different in intellectual difficulty from what was taken then).
I got a State Scholarship at 16, regarded as a young age. At the time there were third years of the Sixth Form, and some people stayed on at school until 19 in order to try to get State Scholarships, or at least to do well on the S-level papers. S-level (scholarship) papers were more demanding than A-level papers.
But although the State Scholarship gave me a notional cachet as compared with a County Scholarship, it did not give me (at the time I took it) any financial advantage. All those who had their university fees topped up by the state had them topped up to the same level and received the same amount to live on.
I also got the top scholarship to Somerville College, known as the Senior Open Scholarship, but this also was a cachet and no more. A fraction of my fees was paid by the college, the rest by the state.
From that time on, the number of people going to university each year increased continuously, all receiving a similar level of financial support, regardless of ability.
By now about 50% of the population attends university or similar institutions. The fees have about trebled, and those who get bursaries or subsidies are those from the poorest families, which is in fact most likely to favour the lowest IQs.
Those with the highest IQs are now at no advantage relative to any other university entrant from a middle-class family, and have to acquire enormous loans (likely to be over £50,000 for those starting in 2012) in order to complete their university courses.
Pre-Welfare State, the highest IQs were at an advantage in getting the few scholarships available; now they are bracketed with the middle class at large in being discouraged by the prospect of debt, quite apart from any discrimination practised against them during the admissions process. Debt, one may surmise, is likely to deter the higher IQs the most, as they are likely to be more forethoughtful and existentially aware.
Only those with the ‘poorest’ backgrounds will be actively encouraged by getting their fees paid, and by various ‘outreach’ strategies that are being pursued. Those with the highest IQs, who would formerly have had the best chances of State Scholarships, are unlikely to fall into this category. To have such an IQ implies at least a fairly high IQ on the part of both parents, and at least one of them is likely to have a reasonable income.
11 July 2012
Tax the pensioners till the pips squeak
Attention continues to be focused on the population of pensioners. This is a group with an average IQ above that for the population as a whole. One might have hoped (and did hope) that having run the gauntlet of the taxation system up to retirement age, one might be left alone with whatever resources one had managed to conserve. But no, it will not do. An additional direct tax on the working elderly is being proposed (misleadingly labelled ‘national insurance’).
At present, there is a reduced rate of tax on the earnings of those of pensionable age, which one might have considered reasonable as recognition of their having reached an age at which they are likely to be needing to pay more for age-related facilities, such as cleaners and takeaway meals, while the hours which they could work might be limited. Now it is argued they should be taxed more, ostensibly in order to finance a tax cut for younger workers.
There are other potential rationalisations waiting in the wings as reasons for taxing the working elderly. For example, it is being argued that all local councils should have the same criteria for assessing ‘need’ for the sorts of ‘help’ they provide. So overall, councils will no doubt have to pay out more than they do at present, and where will that come from? From taxpayers, which includes the population of those who do not seek, or do not qualify for, ‘help’ from councils. Thus, in effect, resources are to be transferred from the more independent pensioners to those who fall into the clutches of the Oppressive State, voluntarily or involuntarily.
It seems very likely that the population of pensioners who keep themselves independent, by working or otherwise, has a higher average IQ than the population which fails to do so. So transferring resources from the former population to the latter also fulfils the standard acceptability criterion (see above).
* For more on how pensioners are being increasingly regarded as milch cows, see here and here.
At present, there is a reduced rate of tax on the earnings of those of pensionable age, which one might have considered reasonable as recognition of their having reached an age at which they are likely to be needing to pay more for age-related facilities, such as cleaners and takeaway meals, while the hours which they could work might be limited. Now it is argued they should be taxed more, ostensibly in order to finance a tax cut for younger workers.
Older workers who choose to stay in their jobs beyond 65 should pay national insurance to support young workers, a group of Tory MPs has said. Up to £2 billion a year could be raised by imposing National Insurance on the income of Babyboomers who are still in work. The money would be used to give young, low paid workers a National Insurance ‘holiday’ to allow them to get ahead.Over-65s are a selected population, even if selected only by managing to survive to that age. The proposed tax involves resources being transferred to a younger population, selected only by being ‘low-paid’. This fulfils the familiar acceptability criterion applied to a potential tax used to finance benefits, that resources should be moved from a population with a higher average IQ to one with a lower average IQ.
The recommendation is on the back of studies showing that this generation of young workers is likely to end up worse off than their parents. At the moment, older workers are not required to pay National Insurance - although their bosses have to pay 13.8 per cent - because the money is perceived as being for pensions and benefits.
The money would also be used to scrap the National Insurance payments for those who employed young workers. This would be worth an extra £375 for an 18 year old working 40 hours a week on the minimum wage rate of £4.98 - and would save their boss £450 per year. For a 21 year old, it could be £675 a year, saving the employer £800. (Daily Mail, 9th July 2012)
There are other potential rationalisations waiting in the wings as reasons for taxing the working elderly. For example, it is being argued that all local councils should have the same criteria for assessing ‘need’ for the sorts of ‘help’ they provide. So overall, councils will no doubt have to pay out more than they do at present, and where will that come from? From taxpayers, which includes the population of those who do not seek, or do not qualify for, ‘help’ from councils. Thus, in effect, resources are to be transferred from the more independent pensioners to those who fall into the clutches of the Oppressive State, voluntarily or involuntarily.
It seems very likely that the population of pensioners who keep themselves independent, by working or otherwise, has a higher average IQ than the population which fails to do so. So transferring resources from the former population to the latter also fulfils the standard acceptability criterion (see above).
* For more on how pensioners are being increasingly regarded as milch cows, see here and here.
08 July 2012
A YouTube video about my ‘misogyny’
text of a letter to someone who posted a video about my ideas on YouTube
My colleague Dr Charles McCreery came across your video on YouTube. It is interesting that you find some of my ideas fairly palatable – that is, my ideas about the drawbacks of female psychology.
As you may have gathered, the main point of my writing books is to advertise my need for people to come and work with me. This applies to people of any age, sex, social status, and ethnicity. Also of any IQ, although in practice only people with a very high IQ consider coming here.
You mention in your video that you regard my writing to have deteriorated since I wrote The Human Evasion. While writing The Human Evasion I had a very small modicum of financial support, and while I was writing it I was still hoping that my other books (Lucid Dreams and Out-of-the-Body Experiences) would encourage people to give me financial support to carry out further research in the areas which I had opened up.
However, no such support was forthcoming. I was not in a position to carry out any viable research into lucid dreams or any other hallucinatory experiences, nor in anything else, such as theoretical physics. The books which you regard as showing a deterioration in the quality of my writing are simply what I have managed to squeeze out in a totally unsupported and constricted situation. If you have looked at my blog (which has been running since 2006), you will see that I am still attempting to enter on the 40-year professorial career which I should have started 50 years ago when I left college. I am also attempting to build up my current situation into at least one university department which will provide me with the hotel environment which I need to lead a liveable life of progressive intellectual activity.
As I said, I need people to come and work with me, to help me build up my situation. If people want to help me, they have to be unselective about what they do, and not insist on doing ‘creative’ work. If you are interested in this possibility, you are welcome to come. I do not know how difficult it is for Australians as regards visas, work permits, etc. You would have to sort this out yourself if you are interested enough. Even if you do not wish to come yourself, please let other people know about my existence and my need for people to work with me. I would be happy to send complimentary books to anyone who supplies a postal address, including yourself. If you send your postal address we would send you complimentary copies of books, which you could present to public or university libraries.
My colleague Dr Charles McCreery came across your video on YouTube. It is interesting that you find some of my ideas fairly palatable – that is, my ideas about the drawbacks of female psychology.
As you may have gathered, the main point of my writing books is to advertise my need for people to come and work with me. This applies to people of any age, sex, social status, and ethnicity. Also of any IQ, although in practice only people with a very high IQ consider coming here.
You mention in your video that you regard my writing to have deteriorated since I wrote The Human Evasion. While writing The Human Evasion I had a very small modicum of financial support, and while I was writing it I was still hoping that my other books (Lucid Dreams and Out-of-the-Body Experiences) would encourage people to give me financial support to carry out further research in the areas which I had opened up.
However, no such support was forthcoming. I was not in a position to carry out any viable research into lucid dreams or any other hallucinatory experiences, nor in anything else, such as theoretical physics. The books which you regard as showing a deterioration in the quality of my writing are simply what I have managed to squeeze out in a totally unsupported and constricted situation. If you have looked at my blog (which has been running since 2006), you will see that I am still attempting to enter on the 40-year professorial career which I should have started 50 years ago when I left college. I am also attempting to build up my current situation into at least one university department which will provide me with the hotel environment which I need to lead a liveable life of progressive intellectual activity.
As I said, I need people to come and work with me, to help me build up my situation. If people want to help me, they have to be unselective about what they do, and not insist on doing ‘creative’ work. If you are interested in this possibility, you are welcome to come. I do not know how difficult it is for Australians as regards visas, work permits, etc. You would have to sort this out yourself if you are interested enough. Even if you do not wish to come yourself, please let other people know about my existence and my need for people to work with me. I would be happy to send complimentary books to anyone who supplies a postal address, including yourself. If you send your postal address we would send you complimentary copies of books, which you could present to public or university libraries.
04 July 2012
To potential associates in Greece (and elsewhere)
An open letter
We welcome people from Greece who wish to visit us, because we want people to know about our situation and our need for people to work with us.
We are a developing and hopefully expanding organisation opposed by the bitterest social hostility, in spite of being extremely respectable. We say we are aiming at being an independent university with several research departments and a publishing company supported by a business empire, because people need to be aware of our long-term aims so as not to misinterpret our present embryonic state, which can still do little more than some book publishing and investment. Our relatively modest position, and apparent lack of progress, results from the apparently universal desire that we should be squeezed to death, and is not a reflection of our objectives.
Our expansion depends very much on getting to know more people who might come and work with us. We would like to have people coming as temporary or part-time workers to get to know the situation, and spread the word about it among their acquaintances. People who come need to be unselective about the work they do; it is no use to us if people insist only on doing ‘creative’ or ‘interesting’ things such as working with computers. We need people to be willing to do whatever happens to be useful at the time, especially when they are starting with no knowledge of our office systems.
It is best if people come as voluntary workers, supporting themselves in the first instance, so they can get to know the work. We realise this may be difficult for people from Greece, but it is only by coming on a short-term basis that people can get to know about our position realistically. Even if this does not lead to their ever wishing to come permanently, at least they would be in a position to tell others about us and about our need for additional manpower.
When we say that people should be prepared to support themselves in the first instance, this refers to their legal position. We would not want them to be uncomfortable before we could work out if a permanent arrangement was possible.
We are situated in Cuddesdon, a pleasant village outside Oxford. The village has good views and clean air, and is near to major roads to both Oxford and London. There is a Christian theological college (Ripon College) in the village.
There is a demand for workers of various sorts in Britain. If more people were to come than we could support in our organisation, we would attempt to set up ways in which they could supplement their income by doing freelance work.
David Cameron has threatened that, if Greece leaves the eurozone, he would set up border controls to prevent Greek citizens from flooding into the country. It might therefore be a good idea to act promptly if the prospect of coming here permanently interests you.
If you are interested in the possibilities discussed, please email us via the contact page on my website, putting the word ‘Greece’ in the subject header.
We welcome people from Greece who wish to visit us, because we want people to know about our situation and our need for people to work with us.
We are a developing and hopefully expanding organisation opposed by the bitterest social hostility, in spite of being extremely respectable. We say we are aiming at being an independent university with several research departments and a publishing company supported by a business empire, because people need to be aware of our long-term aims so as not to misinterpret our present embryonic state, which can still do little more than some book publishing and investment. Our relatively modest position, and apparent lack of progress, results from the apparently universal desire that we should be squeezed to death, and is not a reflection of our objectives.
Our expansion depends very much on getting to know more people who might come and work with us. We would like to have people coming as temporary or part-time workers to get to know the situation, and spread the word about it among their acquaintances. People who come need to be unselective about the work they do; it is no use to us if people insist only on doing ‘creative’ or ‘interesting’ things such as working with computers. We need people to be willing to do whatever happens to be useful at the time, especially when they are starting with no knowledge of our office systems.
It is best if people come as voluntary workers, supporting themselves in the first instance, so they can get to know the work. We realise this may be difficult for people from Greece, but it is only by coming on a short-term basis that people can get to know about our position realistically. Even if this does not lead to their ever wishing to come permanently, at least they would be in a position to tell others about us and about our need for additional manpower.
When we say that people should be prepared to support themselves in the first instance, this refers to their legal position. We would not want them to be uncomfortable before we could work out if a permanent arrangement was possible.
We are situated in Cuddesdon, a pleasant village outside Oxford. The village has good views and clean air, and is near to major roads to both Oxford and London. There is a Christian theological college (Ripon College) in the village.
There is a demand for workers of various sorts in Britain. If more people were to come than we could support in our organisation, we would attempt to set up ways in which they could supplement their income by doing freelance work.
David Cameron has threatened that, if Greece leaves the eurozone, he would set up border controls to prevent Greek citizens from flooding into the country. It might therefore be a good idea to act promptly if the prospect of coming here permanently interests you.
If you are interested in the possibilities discussed, please email us via the contact page on my website, putting the word ‘Greece’ in the subject header.
28 June 2012
Withering faster on the vine
After some years or decades of ‘withering on the vine’ it was announced first that state pensions would be means-tested, and then that the ‘basic’ state pension which remained would be increased each year in line with the CPI (Consumer Prices Index). This is less than if the increase were based on the RPI (Retail Prices Index) which includes the cost of housing, presumably because it is supposed that if you are poor enough you can apply for housing benefit, so your pension should not need to include your rent, mortgage, house repairs etc.
Not only that, but the CPI can be manipulated in various ways, one of them being to arrange for individual suppliers to operate means-testing. Electricity and water suppliers are to supply more cheaply to ‘poorer’ customers. Supermarkets are to keep down the cost of the cheapest and most basic foods so that price rises will be made only, and more steeply, on higher-quality or more nutritious foods.
Now the threatened increase in fuel tax is to be postponed from August to January. If it had started to apply in August, as was apparently planned, it would have affected the September CPI, on which the increases in next year’s pensions will be based.
In any case, it would have been a tax on motorists commuting to their jobs rather than on those who were excluded from academic careers and had to live as capitalists; or on pensioners, few of whom commute to jobs. Such a tax would be penalising the ‘working’ population more than the ‘independent’ population and that is presumably not what modern ideology favours. Independence is normally to be stamped out at any cost.
Those drawing pensions who will never apply for any means-tested benefit, such as myself, can derive little joy from observing the real value of their ‘pension’ shrinking year by year, ever further from a realistic cost of living, even leaving the cost of housing out of it.
Three or four decades ago I remember asking myself whether it was really good value to pay voluntary contributions towards the state pension when I had no salary. Might I not do better by putting aside an equivalent amount of money and investing it as favourably as possible? But, I thought, as probably many others did, there might be an unforeseeable Weimar-style inflation, and then the state would have to keep the pension at a realistic level, whereas one’s own investments might not keep pace with a very high level of inflation. So paying into the state pension was an insurance policy, protecting at least a small part of one’s money from erosion under all conceivable circumstances. So I thought, some decades ago.
Not only that, but the CPI can be manipulated in various ways, one of them being to arrange for individual suppliers to operate means-testing. Electricity and water suppliers are to supply more cheaply to ‘poorer’ customers. Supermarkets are to keep down the cost of the cheapest and most basic foods so that price rises will be made only, and more steeply, on higher-quality or more nutritious foods.
Now the threatened increase in fuel tax is to be postponed from August to January. If it had started to apply in August, as was apparently planned, it would have affected the September CPI, on which the increases in next year’s pensions will be based.
In any case, it would have been a tax on motorists commuting to their jobs rather than on those who were excluded from academic careers and had to live as capitalists; or on pensioners, few of whom commute to jobs. Such a tax would be penalising the ‘working’ population more than the ‘independent’ population and that is presumably not what modern ideology favours. Independence is normally to be stamped out at any cost.
Those drawing pensions who will never apply for any means-tested benefit, such as myself, can derive little joy from observing the real value of their ‘pension’ shrinking year by year, ever further from a realistic cost of living, even leaving the cost of housing out of it.
Three or four decades ago I remember asking myself whether it was really good value to pay voluntary contributions towards the state pension when I had no salary. Might I not do better by putting aside an equivalent amount of money and investing it as favourably as possible? But, I thought, as probably many others did, there might be an unforeseeable Weimar-style inflation, and then the state would have to keep the pension at a realistic level, whereas one’s own investments might not keep pace with a very high level of inflation. So paying into the state pension was an insurance policy, protecting at least a small part of one’s money from erosion under all conceivable circumstances. So I thought, some decades ago.
27 June 2012
More on lucid dreams and the BBC
text of a recent letter to an academic
I have just sent you a link to our comments on the BBC’s omission of any mention of me from their history of lucid dreams. This omission is despite the fact that it has always been said that no one has denied my priority in the field of lucid dream research.
Moreover they give a link to Stephen LaBerge’s website, but not to mine. I have got far more information and ideas about what could be done to make real progress in research, and people should want to know about my need for funding to get started on it. Stephen LaBerge, having a salary, research assistants, laboratory facilities, access to college dining facilities, and so on, is in a position to be ‘doing something’ in their eyes, whereas I, who could be making much more progress than he does, with even half as much money as he uses, can only continue to work towards being in a position to get measurements made in a laboratory; so I do not count as ‘doing something’ in the eyes of the BBC or anyone else.
Stephen LaBerge is able to raise money to finance his ideas on ‘virtual reality’, whereas I can get no support at all.
When I met Stephen LaBerge at a conference, he expressed no sympathy with my disastrous situation. By that time he knew that my work on lucid dreams had been motivated by my need to get back into a suitable academic position. There was certainly no indication that this modified his rejoicing at the favourableness of his own position, in which he was well-placed to get money to do (nominal) research in this field which I had opened up, while I could get no money at all and hence could do nothing.
He has continued to publicise the possibilities of lucid dreams ever since, but he has never even had the decency to send me a small fraction of anything he received.
His name is on the list of people who have worked on lucid dreams in America, presumably all salaried, from whom I have requested a donation of £1000 a year each to support my work in my independent academic institution. None of these people have had the decency to send me a small fraction of their salaries, which would have appeared to me natural in the circumstances.
We will make some sort of protest to the BBC, although this is very difficult when our secretarial capacity is already so overloaded.
Another American research worker, Jayne Gackenbach, told me that she had put some money of her own into supporting an organisation of people having lucid dreams, so that they could compare notes and publish a journal. But although she had been prepared to put some of her money into that, she had not been prepared to put even an equivalent amount into supporting the person who had originated this field of research in which she was allegedly working.
I asked Jayne Gackenbach if she could suggest ways in which I could get financial support to carry on my own research. ‘Oh no’, she said, ‘Getting money for research is impossible. I have given up on trying to get any’. She conveniently avoided noticing the great difference between her position and mine, that she had all the advantages of a salaried academic career. Being deprived of this, I needed large-scale funding for research in a specific area, to start making good the lack of money to live on and the lack of an institutional environment to provide the minimum conditions necessary for a tolerable life.
I have just sent you a link to our comments on the BBC’s omission of any mention of me from their history of lucid dreams. This omission is despite the fact that it has always been said that no one has denied my priority in the field of lucid dream research.
Moreover they give a link to Stephen LaBerge’s website, but not to mine. I have got far more information and ideas about what could be done to make real progress in research, and people should want to know about my need for funding to get started on it. Stephen LaBerge, having a salary, research assistants, laboratory facilities, access to college dining facilities, and so on, is in a position to be ‘doing something’ in their eyes, whereas I, who could be making much more progress than he does, with even half as much money as he uses, can only continue to work towards being in a position to get measurements made in a laboratory; so I do not count as ‘doing something’ in the eyes of the BBC or anyone else.
Stephen LaBerge is able to raise money to finance his ideas on ‘virtual reality’, whereas I can get no support at all.
When I met Stephen LaBerge at a conference, he expressed no sympathy with my disastrous situation. By that time he knew that my work on lucid dreams had been motivated by my need to get back into a suitable academic position. There was certainly no indication that this modified his rejoicing at the favourableness of his own position, in which he was well-placed to get money to do (nominal) research in this field which I had opened up, while I could get no money at all and hence could do nothing.
He has continued to publicise the possibilities of lucid dreams ever since, but he has never even had the decency to send me a small fraction of anything he received.
His name is on the list of people who have worked on lucid dreams in America, presumably all salaried, from whom I have requested a donation of £1000 a year each to support my work in my independent academic institution. None of these people have had the decency to send me a small fraction of their salaries, which would have appeared to me natural in the circumstances.
We will make some sort of protest to the BBC, although this is very difficult when our secretarial capacity is already so overloaded.
Another American research worker, Jayne Gackenbach, told me that she had put some money of her own into supporting an organisation of people having lucid dreams, so that they could compare notes and publish a journal. But although she had been prepared to put some of her money into that, she had not been prepared to put even an equivalent amount into supporting the person who had originated this field of research in which she was allegedly working.
I asked Jayne Gackenbach if she could suggest ways in which I could get financial support to carry on my own research. ‘Oh no’, she said, ‘Getting money for research is impossible. I have given up on trying to get any’. She conveniently avoided noticing the great difference between her position and mine, that she had all the advantages of a salaried academic career. Being deprived of this, I needed large-scale funding for research in a specific area, to start making good the lack of money to live on and the lack of an institutional environment to provide the minimum conditions necessary for a tolerable life.
26 June 2012
Academia and the IPR: not mutually exclusive
There has always been a tendency to represent working in (or being associated in any way with) my incipient independent academic organisation, known as the Institute of Psychophysical Research, as if it were an alternative to an academic career, and that a career in the IPR and a university career were mutually exclusive. This has been used as a way of forcing those who became associated with me into an outcast position.
Consider, for example, the case of Dr Charles McCreery.
In his final year at New College, Charles had met me and become aware that my intellectual precocity had led to hostility which, since I was not free to make my own decisions, had ruined my education and career prospects. He recognised parallels to his own problems in those I had encountered, and saw that my position was, at least superficially, even more appalling than his own, on account of my low socioeconomic status, which in fact arose from the social displacement of two families with aristocratic antecedents.
Therefore he wanted to help me and thought that he could do so, as he saw no reason why my fund-raising, virtually aborted by the hostility of Somerville and senior academics associated with the SPR, could not immediately be put on an altogether different footing by invoking the aid of his parents and their numerous wealthy and statusful contacts.
Therefore, after his degree, he did not immediately embark on a career at the Tavistock Clinic in London or at Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology, but put his energies into assisting with my fund-raising campaign. The future structure of the Institute and his possible relation to it, probably working for academic status on his own account while helping me to plan projects and organise research assistants, would depend on the scale of operation that was possible, and this could not be determined until it was seen how successful the fund-raising could be.
I was always keen on the idea of my associates working for DPhils and aiming at professorial status, so that their academic status could be used to support my own applications for Professorships.
Charles had been considering applying to work as a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. I thought that I might prefer him to do a DPhil and proceed to an academic appointment in Oxford, but he was disenchanted with what went on at the Department and thought that he would probably prefer the Tavistock.
I deferred any discussion of the alternatives until it could be seen how successful the fund-raising could be, and what scale of operation it might permit. The more successful it was, the easier it would be to combine our research activities with Charles having a salaried job in London.
In any case, there was certainly no plan, either on his part or on mine, for his association with the Institute to involve any detraction from other career paths. It is perfectly possible for an academic – provided he is successful enough, whether in terms of peer approval, public success or fund-raising skills – to combine roles for a number of different institutions at the same time. This was certainly the idea when we started, even if in retrospect it was over-optimistic, since it underestimated the opposition we would encounter.
In fact the fund-raising was aborted by the hostility of Charles’s parents, who joined forces with those who were already hostile to us, in spite of having agreed to become Patrons, and hence ostensible supporters. General and Lady McCreery both made tiny covenants, ludicrously incommensurate with the benefits which they bestowed on Charles’s siblings.
Charles was driven into the breach with his family by their persistent and insulting hostility, in spite of the great efforts he made, over a period of at least a year, to comply with their demands. In putting so much pressure on him, one may suppose that his family were motivated to justify themselves in slandering and disinheriting him. His siblings, of course, had the additional motive of seeing the opportunity to enlarge their own shares of any inheritance from which he was excluded.
The idea has always been widely promoted that, in setting up the legal constitution of an independent academic organisation, I was setting up something in which people could work as an alternative to an academic career. My potential associates were, almost always, people with very high IQs who might normally have been regarded as good prospects for such careers. The image which tended to be foisted upon us – that of a group of ‘enthusiasts’ for some unusual area of research – was maintained by the repeated rejection of my associates for higher degrees, or for appointments.
This, of course, may have had something to do with the storms of slander which arose whenever there seemed to be a possibility of my gaining an advantage by acquiring a financial supporter or an advantageous associate.
Charles, with his family connections, was the most potentially advantageous associate I had ever had, or have had since. The fund-raising having been aborted, it was clear that his working at the Tavistock would be too demanding, in view of the costs of travel to London and accommodation when there, so that the option of taking a DPhil at the Department of Experimental Psychology now became the best possible one.
However, the pressure upon us continued to be so great that Charles did not attempt to take a DPhil until he was 44, and his then obtaining it led to nothing, as no allowance was made for the difficulties created by our anomalous position. Far from it, of course, he was stigmatised by the well-publicised awareness of his association with me, and could obtain only disadvantageous appointments, such as that of College Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Magdalen College. For this he received only a pittance, but continued to hope that this sweated labour might lead to better opportunities.
Without going into detail about all the discriminations against him, and the rationalisations used to justify his exclusion, it became clear that he was, like me, to be kept out of any appointment worth having.
It has throughout been the case that we were motivated to do research work which would enhance our individual claims on academic careers aimed at Professorial status, but this was made impossible by the financial siege conditions. No money could reach us from any source, so research, and even the writing and publishing of books, became impossible. It remains the case that we are attempting to raise funds to enable us to establish our claim on starting our forty-year academic careers, however belatedly.
Consider, for example, the case of Dr Charles McCreery.
In his final year at New College, Charles had met me and become aware that my intellectual precocity had led to hostility which, since I was not free to make my own decisions, had ruined my education and career prospects. He recognised parallels to his own problems in those I had encountered, and saw that my position was, at least superficially, even more appalling than his own, on account of my low socioeconomic status, which in fact arose from the social displacement of two families with aristocratic antecedents.
Therefore he wanted to help me and thought that he could do so, as he saw no reason why my fund-raising, virtually aborted by the hostility of Somerville and senior academics associated with the SPR, could not immediately be put on an altogether different footing by invoking the aid of his parents and their numerous wealthy and statusful contacts.
Therefore, after his degree, he did not immediately embark on a career at the Tavistock Clinic in London or at Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology, but put his energies into assisting with my fund-raising campaign. The future structure of the Institute and his possible relation to it, probably working for academic status on his own account while helping me to plan projects and organise research assistants, would depend on the scale of operation that was possible, and this could not be determined until it was seen how successful the fund-raising could be.
I was always keen on the idea of my associates working for DPhils and aiming at professorial status, so that their academic status could be used to support my own applications for Professorships.
Charles had been considering applying to work as a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. I thought that I might prefer him to do a DPhil and proceed to an academic appointment in Oxford, but he was disenchanted with what went on at the Department and thought that he would probably prefer the Tavistock.
I deferred any discussion of the alternatives until it could be seen how successful the fund-raising could be, and what scale of operation it might permit. The more successful it was, the easier it would be to combine our research activities with Charles having a salaried job in London.
In any case, there was certainly no plan, either on his part or on mine, for his association with the Institute to involve any detraction from other career paths. It is perfectly possible for an academic – provided he is successful enough, whether in terms of peer approval, public success or fund-raising skills – to combine roles for a number of different institutions at the same time. This was certainly the idea when we started, even if in retrospect it was over-optimistic, since it underestimated the opposition we would encounter.
In fact the fund-raising was aborted by the hostility of Charles’s parents, who joined forces with those who were already hostile to us, in spite of having agreed to become Patrons, and hence ostensible supporters. General and Lady McCreery both made tiny covenants, ludicrously incommensurate with the benefits which they bestowed on Charles’s siblings.
Charles was driven into the breach with his family by their persistent and insulting hostility, in spite of the great efforts he made, over a period of at least a year, to comply with their demands. In putting so much pressure on him, one may suppose that his family were motivated to justify themselves in slandering and disinheriting him. His siblings, of course, had the additional motive of seeing the opportunity to enlarge their own shares of any inheritance from which he was excluded.
The idea has always been widely promoted that, in setting up the legal constitution of an independent academic organisation, I was setting up something in which people could work as an alternative to an academic career. My potential associates were, almost always, people with very high IQs who might normally have been regarded as good prospects for such careers. The image which tended to be foisted upon us – that of a group of ‘enthusiasts’ for some unusual area of research – was maintained by the repeated rejection of my associates for higher degrees, or for appointments.
This, of course, may have had something to do with the storms of slander which arose whenever there seemed to be a possibility of my gaining an advantage by acquiring a financial supporter or an advantageous associate.
Charles, with his family connections, was the most potentially advantageous associate I had ever had, or have had since. The fund-raising having been aborted, it was clear that his working at the Tavistock would be too demanding, in view of the costs of travel to London and accommodation when there, so that the option of taking a DPhil at the Department of Experimental Psychology now became the best possible one.
However, the pressure upon us continued to be so great that Charles did not attempt to take a DPhil until he was 44, and his then obtaining it led to nothing, as no allowance was made for the difficulties created by our anomalous position. Far from it, of course, he was stigmatised by the well-publicised awareness of his association with me, and could obtain only disadvantageous appointments, such as that of College Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Magdalen College. For this he received only a pittance, but continued to hope that this sweated labour might lead to better opportunities.
Without going into detail about all the discriminations against him, and the rationalisations used to justify his exclusion, it became clear that he was, like me, to be kept out of any appointment worth having.
It has throughout been the case that we were motivated to do research work which would enhance our individual claims on academic careers aimed at Professorial status, but this was made impossible by the financial siege conditions. No money could reach us from any source, so research, and even the writing and publishing of books, became impossible. It remains the case that we are attempting to raise funds to enable us to establish our claim on starting our forty-year academic careers, however belatedly.
22 June 2012
Worthless ‘degrees’, pointless ‘research’
I wrote previously about how socialism had been a bad influence in my life until I got a very modest amount of support in setting up my independent research establishment from a newspaper tycoon, Cecil Harmsworth King. As I had been thrown out at the end of the state-funded ‘education’ with no usable qualification, I had seen no way ahead but to set up my own academic institution to provide me with the circumstances of a tolerable and intellectually productive life.
The temporary initial support from Cecil King was the only non-trivial support I have ever had. By trivial I mean donations and covenants which cost more in accountancy, bookkeeping work and letters of acknowledgement than they are adequate to pay for. Neither bookkeepers nor secretaries come cheap, or are reliable.
I am still in need of financial support now.
When the very modest amount of finance from Cecil King ended we were left with no support from any source. I would not get into debt, nor would I sell the house, so we lived from hand to mouth.
It has continued to be impossible to get financial support from any source. The modern world has become increasingly averse to ‘unsupervised’ research, in which a person might be free to find something out. The concept of supervised ‘research’, on the other hand, has expanded as ever larger populations acquire worthless doctorates, Masters’ degrees, and so on. Before a certain date I do not think that the concept of research included ‘supervision’; I am not sure what that date was. Certainly by the time I was an undergraduate there were ‘research students’ working under supervision for ‘higher degrees’.
People, especially of course academics, like to talk as if ‘degrees’ had some intrinsic value, and as if one should be grateful to the university for allowing one the opportunity to use one’s ability in this ‘interesting’ way, even if one has been receiving no salary and, on the contrary, paying fees to the university.
It is important to realise that none of the degrees, at whatever level, which have been obtained by people here were of the slightest use. This includes my own DPhil, which I obtained in 1996. In every case it was a matter of putting in a good deal of hard, boring and pointless work over a period of years, with the sole aim of obtaining a qualification, which one had to hope would lead to a salaried appointment, or its equivalent in the form of a grant adequate to support comparable work outside a university.
I always hoped that my colleagues Dr Charles McCreery and Dr Fabian Wadel would attain professorial status as quickly as possible, so as to be able to use their status in support of my applications for Professorships, etc. But their careers never progressed beyond the stage of sweated labour; doing useless but tiring work to obtain academic ‘recognition’.
The temporary initial support from Cecil King was the only non-trivial support I have ever had. By trivial I mean donations and covenants which cost more in accountancy, bookkeeping work and letters of acknowledgement than they are adequate to pay for. Neither bookkeepers nor secretaries come cheap, or are reliable.
I am still in need of financial support now.
When the very modest amount of finance from Cecil King ended we were left with no support from any source. I would not get into debt, nor would I sell the house, so we lived from hand to mouth.
It has continued to be impossible to get financial support from any source. The modern world has become increasingly averse to ‘unsupervised’ research, in which a person might be free to find something out. The concept of supervised ‘research’, on the other hand, has expanded as ever larger populations acquire worthless doctorates, Masters’ degrees, and so on. Before a certain date I do not think that the concept of research included ‘supervision’; I am not sure what that date was. Certainly by the time I was an undergraduate there were ‘research students’ working under supervision for ‘higher degrees’.
People, especially of course academics, like to talk as if ‘degrees’ had some intrinsic value, and as if one should be grateful to the university for allowing one the opportunity to use one’s ability in this ‘interesting’ way, even if one has been receiving no salary and, on the contrary, paying fees to the university.
It is important to realise that none of the degrees, at whatever level, which have been obtained by people here were of the slightest use. This includes my own DPhil, which I obtained in 1996. In every case it was a matter of putting in a good deal of hard, boring and pointless work over a period of years, with the sole aim of obtaining a qualification, which one had to hope would lead to a salaried appointment, or its equivalent in the form of a grant adequate to support comparable work outside a university.
I always hoped that my colleagues Dr Charles McCreery and Dr Fabian Wadel would attain professorial status as quickly as possible, so as to be able to use their status in support of my applications for Professorships, etc. But their careers never progressed beyond the stage of sweated labour; doing useless but tiring work to obtain academic ‘recognition’.
19 June 2012
Lucid dreams
My colleague Dr Charles McCreery recently sent the following comment to the BBC in connection with a page about lucid dreaming on their online News Magazine.
The definitive signal that our work had led to acceptance of two new fields of research as academic subjects was that Oxford University (I gathered) started to list both lucid dreams and out-of-the-body experiences as suitable topics for postgraduate theses, in both Psychology and Lit.Hum.
Professor Jayne Gackenbach, a lucid dream researcher in America, said some years later that Lucid Dreams was still the most referenced work in academic papers on the subject of lucid dreaming.
The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.
I think any article which purports to include even a brief account of the history of scientific research into the phenomenon of lucid dreaming should mention the contribution of Celia Green, whose book Lucid Dreams was first published in 1968. Both Stephen LaBerge and Keith Hearne, whose later contributions are mentioned in the article, have acknowledged in their publications Dr Green’s priority in the field and their indebtedness to her work.In fact, the subject of lucid dreaming did not exist even as a non-academic field of interest, prior to the publication of Lucid Dreams.
The definitive signal that our work had led to acceptance of two new fields of research as academic subjects was that Oxford University (I gathered) started to list both lucid dreams and out-of-the-body experiences as suitable topics for postgraduate theses, in both Psychology and Lit.Hum.
Professor Jayne Gackenbach, a lucid dream researcher in America, said some years later that Lucid Dreams was still the most referenced work in academic papers on the subject of lucid dreaming.
The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.
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