ALFRED DE GRAZIA
JOURNAL OF THE YEAR 1959
The journal develops regularly from its first day. June 9, 1959. However, a number of scrappy notes for 1959, lacking precise dates, belong to the year. These are all placed at the start of the journal, and, before long, run into the June 9 date. - Ami de Grazia
If it weren't that all the world depended upon love, everybody would be happier without it.
***
Interesting how all the righteous jump upon the existentialists (late French model). How many of them are far inferior men! Cf. existentialists with the so-common organization-men. Are not former far superior? At the very least they want to do something about the world as it is. Yet the organization-men profit from identifying with, say, Catholic attacks on the "immorality" of existentialism. To tell the truth, they are worse!
***
The Pain of Having an I.Q. Over 140
Our oldest son
Can never add.
When he computes it's
Always bad.
In totting checks
He'd find no joy.
But who would ask him?
Lucky boy!
Jill 1958 or 1959
***
The Language of Christ
An Hypothesis Re Jesus
Does He speak as God in
the language of men then
the language of highest men then
the language of loveliest men then
the language of eternity (literal)
the language of his age
the language of eternity (but with translation required)
Meaning by language, His logic,
His examples, His choice of words,
mode of proof?
Can God speak besides thru Jesus.
i.e., cannot we take an instrumentalist view of Christ and his life and work without violence to the concept of Christ as God.
***
Newton is said to have brought the whole universe under the rule of one mathematical law. He did in a faceted way. Planets and atoms respond to principle of gravity in one sense (though all the universe is equally based on defiance of Newton's law, i.e., its opposite).
Anyhow Bentham wanted to be the Newton of moral science and made a mighty stab via the felicific calculus. Why did Bentham fail?
Why did Newton succeed?
What can be done of such grandiose principles in social science?
***
The other day on TV I heard a distinguished scientist say, in response to a question from his interviewer as to whether the new cosmogony of science makes man insignificant, that such was not the case, since man was really "middle-sized," i.e., midway between the solar system and the minute atom and its smaller parts.
But how so, if we know only what we can ultimately or in some degree sense. We may also understand that there may be an infinity of smaller or larger objects unknown to us, i.e., the total "universe" may be only an atom in a far greater invisible universe.
***
Propose Constitutional Amendment to make cities sovereign authorities like the State and Nation.
Cities = over X density of population = such groups are given inalienable authority over schools, taxes, police, justice, planning.
***
article : PROD
Letter to Editor
Reader's Digest on
Citizens Education for Defense
Purely voluntary national organization of individuals who, in cooperation with schools, take on the accelerated or remedial education of half a dozen students one evening a week or every Saturday morning for reading and arithmetic. Better that countless existing groups that take up children's and adults' time, because the existing groups are all "supplementary" to the schools that are supposed to be doing the needed educational job. The hard truth is that WE MUST DO THE SCHOOLS' JOB.
----save money.
----create real scholars.
----raise general level of classes.
----hasten education.
----make education part of our lives.
(not just formal school work).
----anti-professionalism.
A Suppose some friend came to you and said: "Martha, you are pretty fair at arithmetic. We have five children at school who aren't getting the hang of it. Would you let them visit with you an evening a week at your home to get your help?"
B Suppose someone came to you and said:
"Mr. Jones, would you like to see your
Johnny join a little evening group of five
children each Monday night to study
reading with Mrs. Brown around the
corner?"
Yes in both cases. Pure voluntarism, low costs, better community feeling, great emergency, decentralizing, long-run benefits.
***
People irk me who accuse an author of "serving" the business interests when one advocates the public good of freeing business. Would they reproach a shepherd for not keeping his sheep dogs shut in his cabin for the same reason, granted that dogs like to be in the open air? They know that the dogs belong out with the sheep.
***
A primary [election] versus the organization cannot be won without a scandal, or a play directly for the fifty-odd % absolutely party-loyal who turn out in typical primaries.
***
A poem - letter to those who "cannot" worship a "man". Point to the numerous ways in which they worship other men and things less good than Jesus, e.g., F.D.R., Schweitzer, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, etc. Important to make close analogies and prove to a man of "high education" and "high rationality" the essential psychological and moral errors he is making continuously. Why does he "block" at the worship of Jesus? Explain why. The question is always raised by such remarks as "Jesus is good, but why worship him?" Has the word worship an absolute meaning reserved only to signify idolatry in the "enlightened" mind? Is the so-called rational denial of duty to Christ proof of a failure of sense of responsibility and the other fuller obligations of love, charity, and hope?
Istanbul
***
What a gulf between Misirli's kind and Guli German, who holds on to the old dearly!
Then, of course, in the U.S.A., there are public school teachers who love a foreign culture, say Italian, and point out and encourage their pupils' ancestral identification, only to arouse antagonism in them, who are moving away with the speed of light, and who would rather have their brown eyes compared with the Navaho than with the Sicilian while they will also be more comfortable with the teacher who, more chauvinistic and contemptuous of the old world, will regard any remaining traces of their ancestral culture as anachronisms, the sooner discarded the better.
Istanbul
***
Water, alone of the liquids, expands upon freezing, therefore floats. Ramified, enormous consequences:
Ultimately, we must reason: man is because water expands on freezing,
(or)
Water expands on freezing in order to provide for man.
***
Cultural Revolt
Pakistan-Indian - /Western.
U.S.A. ethnic - .
Arab - /Western.
South American progressive - technology.
Turkish - American.
Afford e.g.s of people rejecting their own traits in favor of a new and somewhat foreign culture. They become humorless and narrow in their adaptation to new, and antagonistic to those foreigners in the admired new group who like or pretend to like the old.
Cf. Sereno's story of the lecturer, who, in trying to raise the spirits and be sympathetic to the Indian student in his audience, spoke disparagingly of English colonialism and lightly of cultural differences, saying from his observations of English widows - their aggressiveness towards men, their fondness for bestowing fortunes on cats and dogs, etc. - that suttee was a fine custom that ought to be extended to the West. But after the meeting he was gravely informed by the student that according to the laws of 19x, 19y as amended, etc., suttee was an offense in India and forbidden, also regarded as wrong by enlightened Indians.
Or my friend Misirli, who, when told that Turkish ancient handiwork ought to be emulated in the U.S.A., denies its value and points to some vulgar machine products of Turkey as more useful, better, just like the U.S.A., and is irritated at the interest in Turkey's past.
***
Social scientists and of course natural scientists continually mix up "truthful hypothesis" with "useful hypothesis." The latter is an administrative deduction that is of the essence of scientific advance (which is administrative in nature, i.e., deductive, repetitive - pilot study and repetition thereof). Perhaps Einstein's theory of relativity fell upon fertile soil. The fertile soil is the administrative facet of advancement of knowledge. The relativistic conception - the purest theoretical part of his theory (and of all others of this category of "break-through" in science) - was found in Democritus and other ancient and modern philosophers, humanists, etc.
***
Democracy irons out things. It can't plan very well, but the plan is obvious to potential critics who can look up from what they're doing now and see.
(This is when I lost temporarily my dispatch case at the 14th Street subway station).
Democracy should not be absolute; it is tentative; democrats may be absolutist - i.e., "know the truth" amicably or belligerently"; but democracy as a form of society cannot. Democracy wishes men well in their search for the absolute; it cannot and should not deny them the fact or the search for the fact of absolute truth. But democracy should be like a rearguard; it should clean up after the troops, guard them, but be the last to reassemble with them and then only when they have definitely camped on the Absolute.
***
Write re PROD
Paul Lazarsfeld - article on intellectual biographies.
Nate Pelcoritz - article on external research bibliographies.
Glenn Campbell
John Wahlke - state government studies.
Dayton McKean to review SSRC Annual Report.
See John Petrivich, Princeton.
Harry Krould - articles on libraries.
Sam Konefsky re article.
Bill Baroody re article.
Friedmann on UNESCO political science organization and work, a summary.
Bill Wheaton, Secretary of IPSA, on IPSA organization, prospects, and problems.
Angus Campbell - research possibilities in the 1956 election materials and qualification needed.
Army P.W. - detailed outline used in cross-country studies.
Yarmolinsky - re article on Fund for Republic.
Cantril or Free - International Research Institute.
Glendon Schubert - research the Public Interest.
David McClelland, Harvard, on what he's doing.
Feigl on his course in social science syllabus.
James Prothro on pictures of the political science centers of world.
Felix Oppenheim.
Ben Gedalecia on applied communications research and desire for a couple of bright young men.
Mel Goldberg - comparing applied research in PO and PW.
Hy Cohen - on civil defense.
Friedel
Kissinger
Paul David
Ruel Denny - mass culture.
Walter Laves on UNESCO and political science.
Ben Nelson
Marty Lipset
Lindsay Rogers on national support for behavioral science.
Julian Marias on possible support (Spain)
Fred Kort
C.E. Lindblom
Harry Kariel
Harold Gosnell
Carl Stover - for article on how government agencies do research
F.Goguel
Louis Harris - can some new ideas of election research be used in 1960
Oliver Garceau - on foundations
Dan Price
Robert M. Rosenzweig (Amherst) re politics and career in politics, to suggest a new study in detail.
Dave Truman
H? Hoskins, head of Foreign Service Institute.
Frank Dickinson, younging of electorates and the welfare state.
***
The fastest way to improve conditions in the poor countries is to remove all trade barriers, investment licensing, currency controls, movement of business enterprise, profit restrictions.
Most of the suffering that ensues will occur in the countries most able physically to endure it and to help one another charitably. Much business will move out of advanced countries to the benefit of cultural exchange and economic growth everywhere. Often new business, founded upon new processes, will spring up in the advance countries to replace the old businesses that have left.
***
An analysis of the character of the actions and words of Jesus is necessary, to measure their direction and logic.
E.g., 'turn the other cheek' and 'render under Caesar' should be compared with turning the money lenders out of the Temple and other activistic deeds.
Should be a very detailed study, quantitative, using new concepts and categories.
***
Make the most of Life,
For Dying Begins at Birth
***
Women often prefer weak men - weak
in mind, body, or beauty, spirit, even broken men, self-destructive men, men who prey upon them surreptitiously. Why? Think of all the reasons - all of them "bad" but so awful in their collective weight and frequency, that one might marvel at a strong man's ability to find a mate, especially under modern conditions when a women no longer needs " a strong man to protect me", and can indulge her other motives. Maternalism, masochism (since men no longer beat women a strong man affords no outlet to masochism), "masculine protest", revenge against father, brothers, or men in general, fulfillment of independence, avoidance of responsibility, expiation of guilt for fancied or actual bad behavior in her past life or even in the lives of one's ethnic stock, relapse from the challenges posed to free women, distrust of leading men who have, according to popular and sophisticated social science, "permitted the flower of manhood to be butchered in war" and misgoverned all history, a "disgraceful" business in which, of course, women and weak men had no part.
***
Some people first find agreement in others and then like them.
I like people and then seek to find agreement with them.
If I don't I still like them, but often they turn against me because they are of the first type.
Cold people - and many intellectuals and liberals are so - are of the first kind, and I have had much trouble with them.
Warm people treat issues as unfortunately divisive and often tend to avoid them entirely.
But I am a warm intellectual and must assert "truths" on issues and therefore must suffer from losing affections even when I would want to retain them.
I must say that I still hold mine to be the better way of life, despite troubles.
And my way, I suppose, goes back to (aged 3-17) being always treated affectionately by my father and mother and yet disagreeing almost constantly with them upon questions of fact, history, knowledge, practice, reforms, and objective (non-intimate) values.
***
Solomon : three things difficult:
trace serpent's path over rock
trace path of bird's flight
trace way of fish in the sea
one thing impossible:
the way of man
I believe therefore, in partial agreement, that our worse disasters will always come from lack of understanding rather than excess of control. I.e., stupidity is worse threat to man in general than his control by his enemies (over history).
***
The writers on the social scene today are full of pessimism or "cautious hope" but have nothing to offer. They agonize decently regarding suburbs, low taste, mass habits, etc. They are thumbsuckers.
***
Dictionary of Conceptual Equivalents
Cf. Unabridged dictionary, glossaries, thesaurus, rhymes, etc. Cf. Synopticon. Cf. Human Relations Area, Files, Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Unesco Dictionary.
What do the key words of modern social science vocabulary refer to? in past and present social sciences both same discipline and all disciplines.
This should be philosophical, suggestive - an AID to RESEARCH AND THEORIZING.
E.g, - authority, power, respect, fatherland, etc.
- therapy cure plan, prognosis
- role, reference, identity, etc.
- organization, institution, administration
- representation, delegation, agency
- attitude, belief, opinion, doctrine
Thesaurus uses a kind of psychology in grouping words.
Perhaps this could also devise some action or ideal framework under which to group concepts of social science.
***
People who suffer dislike and disadvantages on ethnic or other grounds believe themselves expert in detecting unfriendly ones. Frequent mistakes are made, however. Jews, particularly, err because they think that hostility may be detected by intellectual reasoning and social traits such as the type of family or occupation others possess. But these latter are statistical measures, even if they are valid indicators. Reasoning itself depends upon presumptions concerning the character and content of language.
A Negro, on the other hand, is less likely to reason or judge the other person's sentiment by stereotype and must depend therefore upon a subliminal or "abdominal" reaction, purely individual save as there may be a pure anti-white paranoia.
Other groups vary between the two poles, depending upon their typical modes of judging the attitudes of others, which modes are correlated naturally then with education and social status.
***
Atlee calls for the World Federation this morning. He is right. Difficulties are not often labeled properly.
Regarding concessions to the poor of power to make determinations to govern U.S.A.
· If the federation were really a limited government, U.S. public might go along. But we have had the theory of limited government burst in America.
· World publics, especially have-nots, have no doctrine of constraint. They are mass majoritarian democracies.
U.S. public, however, should realize that World Federation is vital to America. We must close in. We are clearly losing the world as we stay in half-hearted isolation-intervention.
Also, U.S. public might understand that inside a world federation we would be put on our mettle and not daily as we do now. Then if ever there is a crisis of nation versus federation, we will probably be better able to fight by all means (propaganda, economy, organization, violence) than we are now or will be going it alone and with cool allies.
***
Create a magazine
FUTURE or SOCIAL TREND
devoted to assembling, researching, publishing all the most significant indicators of socio-economic-political conditions in U.S. and world. E.g., how many books published, how many dealt with "triangles", etc.; all sorts of literary and art trends; then also political, e.g., increase in certain forms, practices; etc., etc.
***
Environment
Stimuli
Evocation
Memory
Conscious
Subconscious
Unconscious
Manipulation of stimuli = propaganda, force, management
Manipulation of evocation = rationality
***
New School for Social Research
40th Anniversary Program
(Lasswell, Lerner, Berelson papers)
I'm not sure that Berelson's remarks on foundations are not slightly slanted in favor of the foundations. If I could not testify to his moral courage, I might say that he appears about to hit a foundation for a grant. Resting easily upon my own oars (I have a grant), I am able to belay the foundations.
1 Not convinced regarding evidence of greater positive than negative effect.
2 A good university does more than all the foundations put together. Lerner - about 100 years too late - 18th century was already quantifying social data. Bring this out only to show role of government.
3 Give support to individuals --- $40 millions to 40 men.
Read PROD editorial on MIT - due to universities, government, and foundations. Therefore, some demonstration of good.
Used to be man versus the State.
Now man versus the Institution.
We can support a pluralistic conception.
Pluralistic (cf. medicine) :
churches
unions
businesses
trade associations
municipal
county
state
international
operating foundations
individual and small group
***
May 24-27, 1959
To Do
Letter to Ivey on overhead
Call Sidney Dean, OX7-6000, 2:30 Wednesday ?
Meet with Sidney Dean
Call Neal Cotter on Monday
Call Saenger on Monday
Letter to Ivey on space
Letter to Ivey on personal appointment title
Write Scofield
Send money to Yalcin
Call Dr. George Armstrong, #13, between 9-11 and in PM
Memo to Odin Anderson
Pick up prescription
Write Gardner regarding White letter
Write Supreme Knitting
Read class papers
Turn in grades
Read Miller's article and write him
Write Bernard Zinman (copy to Linz)
Make Eurofund Investment
Prepare minutes of Monday meeting
Call Joel Carmichael and see him
Tally expenses for last two weeks
Call E1 Ghouli regarding New York City appointment
Read Deutsch student article and write karl
Write Roelofs
Read seminar materials
Write Glaser
Draw cash from bank
Write Poroy
Write Hutchins
Write Henry White
Write Scofield
Process Scofield's expenses
Write Wilbur
Review chapters for Van Nostrand submission
Pay bills
Make plane reservation for Friday AM - waiting on 12:50 PM AA
Outline state, federal, and international chapters
Finish International chapter
Send Steve Du Brul the Relm proposal
Write Luknow
Write Lasswell
Write Floyd Flom
Call or write Renzo
