October 6, 1966 Princeton 10:30 PM
Bad headache. Hot flushes, apparent heart palpitations after lunch. Query: alcohol? Alcohol plus fine crop of my garden mushrooms "coprinus" for dinner last evening? Barometric pressures possibly related to hurricane Inez? Something more functionally severe? Poor mood, anyhow. Louise Shelton, our house guest again. A beautiful woman, so well turned out, and 52-years-old. She had a torrid affair with a young Greek and spent weeks with him on a primitive island in the Aegean this summer.
Walked with the shepherd dog along the streets in the balmy night air. Stopped by Velikovsky's to give him an article on "Magnetic Pressures" that describes the newest successes in building up tremendous magnetic charges. What artifice can do, nature may have done and may do. Hence V.'s theories about the possible role of electromagnetic charges in cosmic events and catastrophes may be supported or considered in new light.
He insisted I stay and despite my headache, we talked for nearly two hours. He had me read his latest correspondence and advise him on letters to Sullivan of the New York Times and others. We spoke of his archives and I repeated my thoughts about a foundation to take over his home and archives. He is very anxious about his many remaining tasks. Fifteen they were, he said. I said "I have fifteen not counting you as a project." He joked about the peasant pushing the old ass and saying, in response to a remark of a bystander: 'between us we are 100 years old.'
It is as difficult to make a little change as a big change in politics. Or is it? I sometimes think the former and usually act upon it. But I am a radical by temper and I resent being involved in little changes when bigger ones are needed.
NOT. I wonder: can it be that in the measurement of the difficulty of change, but whether the changes brought on are big or little, that the conservation of a society should be determined?
Examine the headlines and the press releases, but mostly examine the time profiles of leading figures. We get the impression, which may unfortunately be true, that the great nations of the world deal with insignificant problems (of course, they can make mountains from molehills) of small nations. Meanwhile they are compelled to ignore each other; but it can only be in concert that they can solve the larger problems of the world or even these insignificant ones. It is as if the major characters in a drama, turned their backs upon one another and dealt only with such minor characters as were raising a row or signaling them; the plot dissolves and the play is a failure. So go the Soviet Union, the USA, China, France, and Britain. All concert is gone. They talk to one another over their shoulders while dealing furiously with Aden, Vietnam, Albania, Cuba and Cambodia.
A. There are liberties that enhance the liberties of others 1 + 1 = 2
B. There are liberties that diminish the liberties of others. 1 - 1 = 0
C. There are liberties that are satisfied without effect upon the liberties of others 1 + 0 = 1
(A.) are the best kinds of liberties.
D. There are restraints that enhance the liberties of others. - 1 + 1 = 0
E. There are restrains that diminish the liberties of others. - 1 - 1 = - 2
F. There are restrains without effects upon the liberties of
others Person Y (acted upon) - 1 ± 0 = - 1
Active Person X
Liberty X + Y + X + Y - X + (Y) XO Y +
Restraint X - Y + X - Y - X - Y O
Nonsense
in this (Nothing) (X0 Y +) (X0 Y -) (X 0 y 0))
framework 2 (3) 2 (3) 2 (3)
Marx' theory of alienation can be adapted today:
If Happiness (cf. W. James) is Difference between aspiration and achievement
Alienation is difference between social potential and individual achievement
Does social development and therefore alienation however do something like
= social potential / (difference between social potential and individual achievement)
If you cannot learn about a man by asking of him, ask of his enemy. His friends are unobservant, his enemies keenly aware. In politics, in business, in warfare. For what President Johnson is up to, ask his critics. For what Red China is doing, ask Nationalist Chinese. For that the Prophets are saying, demand of the Priests.
Scientific procedure:
1. Scientist Quirk performs operations AB
2. They [sic.] rewrite the history of AB in a universal language Y, and with appropriate revisions of the history of AB so as to fall into the format for the syntax and progression called for by Y, leaving out or modifying certain parts of the history. Theoretically, the parts left out are "irrelevant to truth" and essential "truth" parts must be left in, even if "embarrassing". Call the new version (AB)f(Y).
3. Other scientists then take up Quirck's work and apply it to the body of problems EZ by
1) Replicating (i. e. restore AB by retranslating and rewriting (AbfY) so as to extract Y)
2. Solve EZ by same process as D
October 25, 1966 New York City 9 AM
An animal of some kind seemed to be rustling about in the pipes or just outside my ground floor window at three o'clock this morning. It awakened me and I spent three hours reading newsletters and thinking whether to dissolve Metron Corporation. Then I slept for 2 hours. I must be brewing a change. Yesterday I had a strong feeling that I should depart from New York and perhaps even the United States for five years, with such of my immediate family as remains, to live frugally in a country cottage in a warm climate, there to write and cogitate until forced to return by some call or by necessity. How much money would I need to risk the change -- $5,000 a year for the five of us? $25,000 for five years?
$12,000 savings
5,000 royalties
12,000 sale of home
$29,000
- 3,600 $60 x 5 x 12 = 3,600 for Mother's care
$25,400
I would have to give up my activistic projects -- URS, consulting, Association of the Sci. of Science, Teaching (except for occasional lectures), various projects such as the Newspaper of the Social Sciences and The American Image that had been developing. In five years I would be 52 years old.
We have much admiration for and strive to emulate good scientific procedure and exact conclusions that will stand up to absolute tests. This is SCIENCE! However, we look about us and find that 99% of the population is taught 99% of its "exact" knowledge by novels, movies, comic strips, stories, raconteurs, liars, clowns, journalists, and rank popularizers.
It is unlikely that this process and result will ever end. Why then, should we continue to believe in this artificially created laboratory environment of science that has almost nothing to do with the real "educational process" that people undergo.
Should we not start from the other end again and say: "We shall first say what is right and true, and then assemble all the media of communications to inculcate it. Then whatever is learned will be superior and we shall live science much more truly than we do now. Science should be a way of life, or part of it. Should we not therefore tailor its format to life, and not to a straightjacket that us lunatics of the scientific method like to wear?
To Jill, I explained, with soothing expressions and preliminaries, my thoughts of frugal seclusion for five years and she burst with indignation. "I've wanted a house of my own all my life, and now I have it. I'm not going to move anywhere", etc. Nonsense, of course, since she's lived in most attractive settings in North St. Paul, West Barrington, Stanford, Los Altos, and Princeton. She is contented with her present home, however. No question about that. She will not move -- unless I go somewhere, find a cottage, fix it up to her taste, and then slowly and seductively introduce her to it. I should probably not do so.
Anyhow, the point of my dream was to clear away the activistic elements of my life for several years to finish off my intellectual labors and to enjoy an extended period of Contemplation. Then I might return and plunge myself more wholeheartedly into politics, reform and similar activities, knowing and feeling, allowing death in [banners] I wanted to break the blocking conflict of scholasticism and activism by allotting each to its own spate of time.
DRUGS, LAWS AND GODS
1. On how time is spent, life is lived, and frustrations appeased.
2. The Utopiates and their deviant ways.
3. The new miracle drug. From beat to high. Nature and Effects
4. The combustibles: religions Occidental and Oriental
5. The Question: Deus ex medicina or medicina ex deus?
6. A capsule history of religions and drugs, exotics, erotica, etcetera.
7. The neurotic world of the drug-haters: ego-marginals on the other side.
8. The laws and campaigns against the drugged way of life.
9. The Constitution on the Establishment of Religions: Word and Precedent
10. The Leary Case.
11. The Psychedelic Religion: Rites and rituals, the Book of the Dead.
12. Drugs for all religions: the mystic phases restored and strengthened.
13. Social effects of drugs in religion, especially Psychedelism.
14. Psychic Effects of Drugs in Religion, especially Psychedelism.
15. Creativity and Brainwashing.
16. The Magic Circle around the Supreme Court.
17. The Death and Birth of Societies.
Approximate Pages: 175
(1966 ?)
Should the U. S. Constitution provide that no State shall hold the election of its Chief Executive Officer and legislature on the same date as the election of federal officers?
Perhaps better -- should the State be barred from placing the names of any state candidates or other candidates whatsoever on the federal ballot.
House elections should be conducted at 4-year intervals at a time separated from the President.
