AN IDEA OUT OF MALTA

by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D.

tm. 2011

One of the more exciting experiences to be had in one of the facets of the world of the intellect is that of tracing the route by which ideas are transmitted and how, in addition, those ideas gain acceptance within the general population. In that process, of course, one can end up with a whole genealogy of an idea. While individuals in that extended family may vary from one to the other it seems theoretically possible that aspects of all preceding members of the family of ideas are to be found in the latest addition...unless, of course, the organism that is that particular family is able to eliminate, through selective breeding, what it considers undesirable. One of the more enriching members of some aspects of my personal intellectual organism is the piece by F. David Martin entitled THE PERSISTENT PRESENCE OF ABSTRACT PAINTING which was published by The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in the fall of 1969.

This image is a scanned copy of what I had originally read. It makes no secret of my impulse to correspond with a printed page. In fact, I often do it time and time again. This practice is, I believe, evidence of the importance of the printed word in the development of any intellectual community (or artefact), most especially, it seems to me, in the development of those departments of thinking that require, for the lack of a more suitable term, a period of gestation. I have no substantial argument with either Pater or Walkowitz, both of whom Martin mentions in the article, or any other essayist on this question. However, for me, it is ONLY in the area of implied structural logic that anything close to a parallel structure between the visual arts and those of music and/or dance could logically be maintained. It seems to me that all creative response behaviour is inseparably connected to the medium involved and while there are similarities in response on the part of the creator to the medium within these art forms the structures of these responses are not parallel.

This, I am sure Arthur Deshaies of Providence, had become aware of when he worked with the idea of

translating musical input into graphic equivalents. In the case of the arts, the first distinguishing levels might be those which are relatively easily ascertained such as sight, sound, movement corresponding to the visual arts, music and dance. Within those larger categories are innumerable variations, some of which, by the way, might have a few cross-over characteristics to one of the other senses. The interactions taking place at the moment of creative thought between the material and the minds assessments of the potential of that material in terms of his vaguely conceived aims is, generally, a highly fluid, continually in flux, status until the mind of the creator judges there has been aesthetic satisfaction. After that, the critic takes over and although few seem to have mastered it that job is more difficult than is generally recognized...even by critics. But one should not make the error of assuming that because human senses are based on what we call feeling that that feeling is the same deeply inane and shallow feeling referenced at some PTA meeting in defence of the arts programs. Although, to give proper credit to the PTA audience, they are vaguely aware of the huge significance intuition plays in the development of a civilized human being. The wave of a limp wrist, raised eye brows, rolling eyes and shrugging shoulders are forgivable as being an expression of the frustration one feels at not finding the right words to fit the concept. ..perhaps, not unlike labor pains at birth. Rather let us focus on the fact that the arts programs, if intelligently structured differ from other more intellectually disciplined course work such as math, history, geography, and spelling in that these concern themselves with established areas of knowledge, where, it is believed, one knows what is known. In a well-understood and focused creative arts program while elemental techniques are demonstrated and encouraged their use is left largely undefined and the discovery of the unknown encouraged. It is in this way that the art programs facilitate more than self-discovery, but, in addition. an acceptance of the individuals contribution to the welfare of the group as a whole. As an introductory warning, the above outline of a theory aims, already, at a conclusion that such actively evaluatory mental action on the part of the individual is a basic for mental health, actions on the part of the individual that are understood by that individual, and the reaction of a positively contributing member of a social unit. All of those actions are on one side of the scale and you do what you are told is on the other. Such as what Mark Runco seems to be saying when he urges that creative people learn to be discreet. Instead, one does not tell others they do not see...one simply suffers the slings and arrows until the others learn. The answer, or the secret, if one wills,of the creative process, lies in the ongoing and developmental relationship between the neurological functioning of the artist involved and his chosen medium and the locus of his inspiration. In other words the artist responds to the characteristics of the medium In other intellectual structures such as language, written, oral, or ideographic, mathematics, and

various sciences, there are pertinent structures and relatively permanent procedures established which one is expected to follow before more intuitional mental operations can be, or, in some instances, are allowed to be incorporated. Although, it has been observed that some anxious thoughts may jump the gun, as it were, and departures from authorized procedural behaviour intervene with their creative inspirational moment. The creatively functioning mind, at times, cannot wait and this anxiety of operation encourages a leap-froging over procedural and conceptual obstacles as though, intuitively, that mind, on some level, recognizes an earlier conceptual error...or, it may be a simple change of mind, or view point...after all, they do take place. I do not know, for sure, where the proper beginning for my comments on the Martin essay might be, but I shall hopefully begin with the use of the word abstract which is, in this Martin essay, used inappropriately, but those who agree with its use and seem to understand what he means by it do make quite am awesome crowd. In short, what is abstracted is not non-objective. These words should really not be used interchangeably. The terms abstract posits the existence of something out there...somewhere. Nonobjective becomes an object in its own right, coming, as it were, from nothing excepting mind, and makes no reference to an object out there. However, the original meaning was used in its intention to designate something having been taken from, that is abstracted, from some other original matrix. The abstraction, therefore, would be that which was taken and not, as suggested by a colleague, what was left behind. I did not follow up with my colleagues suggestion that what was left behind was the subject/object of the process of abstraction, nor did I indicate that the logic used was beyond my comprehension. There seemed to be some functioning protocols in that relationship which had urged me to be discreet. But that was forty years ago, today, I do not think I would have allowed intelligent discourse to have become a victim of socially correct behaviour. We might also remember this, while we consider various enigma, the relationship between what the subject is we talk about and the words we use to talk about. It is then we become aware of the relatively obvious, seemingly always present, problem expressed in and by the phrase searching for the right words. Martin, in a foot-note explains, that he used the word abstract the way he did because that is the way most people understand it. The fact that the phrase probably means something to most people suggest that the experience of not being sure that a particular word or set of words might be the right one, or might not be, is relatively common. At a critical time in my intellectual development I was frequently with Barbara Sessions, the first wife of Roger Sessions and the librarian for Bernard Berenson at Itatti, Setignano who quite inevitably while attempting to present a thought in as clear a focus as possible will offer the listener an array of possibly and potentially applicable modifiers perhaps not unlike the refined critical observation Michelangelo might give the problem how, where, and in what direction and force should he strike the marble next. It was a lesson I learned from her (Barbara Sessions) with great enthusiasm and gratitude for enlarging not only my vocabulary but the way the intelligent and selective human being works with the ways available to present an unfamiliar concept to an inexperienced listener. Having said this, I anticipate, I have established that for my arguments sake abstraction refers to what is taken and not to what is left behind, my next concern with the proposals presented by Pater and Walkowitz was the sense of some absence of something I missed in the attempted comparison between what motivated a composer of music and what stirred a visual artist to manipulate the chosen

medium into a finally acceptable product. While both the production of a piece of music and a work of visual art do presumably share aspects of, as yet, non-intellectualized perceptions, such as the auditory and the visual , these sensual patterns as perceived has, as yet, not been codified nor a grammar created which advises and supports an agreed upon structure...not unlike, by way of an example of what is anti-aesthetic, sort of like that commercial product which provides numbered paint tubes and a canvas with similarly numbered spots showing where to put the numbered paints..and lo, magic, the burden of making creative decisions is made for the buyer of the product....and an intellectual structure in place...social obedience and satisfaction with oneself automatically achieved for a measly investment of $15.00. I maintain, as well, that in order to more fully understand what we are talking about it should be remembered that in quite all human manipulations whether in art or science any decision to act involves, inevitably, a process of abstraction. When the operator (man) decides to use a something that is already in context with a something else the operator has decided to abstract the something from its matrix. Having thusly made a seriously radical decision to change the reality for a private purpose of his own and having wilfully discarded the virtue of the original arrangement (the something in the somethings context), it is reasonable to assume his motivations to disrupt that reality were sufficiently commanding to warrant the interference. I would suppose it to be up to the sociologist and the art critic to determine from the final product of this interference with an extant and functioning reality was worth the violation. When I was trying to explain this problem to a mildly dyslexic friend I unwittingly came up with the observation that I considered it an unnecessary burden placed upon the visual artist that he had been, for millennia, expected to make an image of something, a reproduction, if you will, of something already pre-existing and that this popular expectation and, in some instances, a political requirement, had imprisoned the visual artist and hog-tied him through the forces of church, state and social convention from developing a non- dis-enfranchised visual vocabulary as filled with the powers of communication as effectively as those demonstrated by the examples of graphically differently developed written languages.
By the way, the use of the word franchise refers here not to a purchased right to handle someones elses property awarded by a big business or government, but a divinely bestowed right, gift, or obligation implying, it was hoped, a recognition that some are so fixated upon a concept that there seems to be a compulsion, self-imposed, perhaps, but maybe also not, that does not allow the individual to leave the matter alone.

The collection below of 12 images of graphic styles and alphabetical constructs could, but I am sure they are not, be saying the same thing, but they certain look different and all, without doubt whatever are respected systems within their spheres of influence. Theyre thus legitimate even while they are different.. This my way of pointing up that the effort to understand a Renoir, Beckman, a Munch or OKeeffe may be the same in each case in terms of the amount of energy spent, but in each case the critic is required to reconstruct on his own in the absence of an establish alphabet, the logic of the individual artists visual vocabulary.

RENOIR

BECKMAN

MUNCH

OKEEFFE

It might be profitably noted that one of the major differences between the varying ways of manipulating pigment on a flat surface on the one hand and fomulating an alphabet (not incidently related to the sounds of speach) is the absolutely algorithmic necessity to achieve an agreement. The focus of that agreement is the idea of a message, a communication of an idea about which there should be as little variation in meaning as possible so that universal comprehension is a possibility. At that point the aims of the painter differ markedly from that of the writer who uses an establuished alphabet,vocabulary and syntax. The aim of a writer is to make a comprehensible point, the aim of the painter as we can detect from the our examples above is a far more complex, and probably nebluous, a deal both for the creator-artist and the responsive critic.. What I do not see clearly is that which may exist as qualitative differences between the resuts on the audience of clear expository writing and the results on the audience of an unexpected interplay of pigment displayed on a canvas. A writers manipulation of word symbols, language structure amd injections of non-style as means of encouraging the eidetic imagry in his readers may, perhaps, be equivalent to the extraction and manipulation of visual characteristics of real objects as we can see in the works of Renoir Beckman, Munch and OKeeffe above. Both the literary and the visual examples are able to challenge our expectations and to encourage reflection. That may be the major contribution of the artist who alters seen reality in such a way as to provide the observer with the aesthetic version of artificial respiration.

My guess is that it is the word, the word as an instrument of communication, as The Bible has told us initially, has been with us from the beginning and is the ultimate creator...this thought, I think, may explain the horror some have of the lie....for it creates an anti-reality...of sorts, which may explain why the present-day United States of America which now because its blossom of democracy has died and gone to seed claims to be blowing its seeds to the near and the far East even as it hardens the calyx of its territorial outpost Guam and deprives those people of their rights and territories in preparation for war with China as it outflanks Chinas interests in Israel . When Arthur Koestler defends emigrational takeovers of other peoples homesthe Khazar invasion of Palestine-- and conveniently forgets the immorality of theft of both the land and the title of Jew, he is denying the right for some to live in peaceful production while defending and justifying the actions of the bully Government political migrations are, according to Wikipedia, efforts by government entities to relocate persons to geographic regions favored by a government. The motivation for such relocations

generally comes from internal political pressures and the migrations are hoped to relieve the causes of those pressures. The goals may include, establishing power in a disputed territory, encouraging economic development, or relieving urban pressures. Governments, of course, need not be the only authors of such migrations. Group consensus may motivate them separate from Government sponsorship or in secret agreement with government as seemed to be the case in the 19th Century American west and in the present day example of Mexican illegal immigrations into the United States. as well. It is a form of gerrymandering. Few, if any, of these explanations consider the effect such behaviour may have on those who already occupy the area and have established some satisfyingly productive relationship with it. It may appear to readers of The Bible that the divine being described therein who has advised his people to populate and subdue the earth that accompanying that urging (commandment?) might also have been a gentler, considerate, cooperative and compassionate method than the array of behaviours selected. After all there are other bits of divine advice and warnings such as not stealing, killing, and telling lies. In this light, Arthur Koestlers self-righteous defence of the state of Israel takes on a darker colour...a very dark one, indeed. Here it is: Without entering into controversial issues, one may add, as a matter of historical fact, that the partition of Palestine was the result of peaceful Jewish immigration and pioneering effort, which provide the ethical justification for the states legal existence. Whether the chromosomes of its people contains genes of Khazars or Semitic, Roman or Spanish origin is irrelevant and cannot effect Israels right to exist, nor the moral obligation of any civilized person, Gentile or Jew, to defend that right. Even the geographical origins of the native Israelis parents or grandparents tend to be forgotten in the bubbling racial melting pot. The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago, however fascinating, is irrelevant to modern Israel. I repeat the passage here with my notations in red:

Without entering into controversial issues,(after all it is not polite to argue and from the practical side, one could always loose the argument) one may add, as a matter of historical fact, that the partition of Palestine was the result of peaceful Jewish immigration and pioneering effort, (in the final analysis serrupticius behavior such as wolf in sheeps clothing or unintentional infection via a companions sneeze might have a fatal ending) which provide the ethical justification for the states legal existence. Whether the chromosomes of its people contains genes of Khazars or Semitic, Roman or Spanish origin is irrelevant and cannot effect Israels right to exist, (what about the chromosomes of those who were there before this peaceful immigration?, or their rights to their property?) nor the moral obligation of any civilized person, Gentile or Jew, to defend that right. (Ay! Such an attempt to pervert meaning! So when is a righteous man obligated to defend a behaviour based on fraud disguised as a right rooted in precedence? So why, anyway, is precedence used as basis for any action? Precedence does not make a virtue of anything. Where is repentance in this perversely manipulated megillah? This intellectual shell game of where is the issue? One wishes for the clever lady judge in The Merchant of Venice to locate the loop hole fashioned into a noose by the merchant to snag the unwary unintellectual, badly educated, goy. This goy, in contemporary times, these days of the 20th and 21st., century is led to believe in the misshapen concept of democracy with which he is often presented. In its most brief form it says that the majority is always right. It is purposefully overlooked that unless the people are correctly inforrned they cannot make a valid decision. Therefore, the best, easiest and most effect way to destroy the democracy is to control educational standards. Along with that approach goes the awareness that it takes a truly independent mind set to resist the thoughtless decision of the majority and the mass mind can be used to confine such truth tellers and independent thinkers as Martha Mitchell to mental

institutions. Even the geographical origins of the native Israelis parents or grandparents tend to be forgotten in the bubbling racial melting pot.(here we go again with the use of a highly biased word such as melting pot.....Koestler must have thought of his audience as a certain type of American bred to revere the idea of a melting pot). The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago, however fascinating, is irrelevant to modern Israel. (of course, arguments by others are, by their nature, irrelevant. However, a thousand years ago there was no Khazar infusion, but, rather, a disguise, the putting on of a mask. We will call ourselves what we are not and the masquerade will produce expectations in others which will disadvantage them when they are not fulfilled. But we understand, Mr. Koestler, that anything is fair in love and war in so far as the satisfaction of the jollies is concerned.) There is a section in Martins essay which I found particularly clearly stated and absolutely correct in his expression the need on the part of the observer of what he still calls an abstract work, not to read into the work but to get something out of. Anything acquires meaning if it indicates something beyond itself, its full nature being reeled by that connection. Meaning is the product of the relationship between something and the something it indicates, this connection requires, of course, the cognizance of an observer.

I was so appreciative of F. David. Martin when I first read the above for clarifying an aspect of aesthetic experience. Now, I fear, I may be about to re-complicate it. What Martin is telling us i that there is no meaning where there is no communication, where, for example the stimulus is not, perhaps yet, a stimulus for nothing has been stirred and the observer, not observing is not yet an observer. From this we might conclude that nothing cannot exist unless, or until, it gets cognized. This idea makes me very sympathetic to those individuals and groups where political objections to being ignored sometimes end up with experiential reality being dramatically altered for everyone. Such an event has been seen in the American democracy between the years 1860 and 2008. We night also extend this understanding to considering which might be the greater reality...the object realized or the power of mind which cognized the relationship. Ergo, nothing but mind exists. One might suppose that in the exclusively existential world that is why the documentation on paper and notarized by officials becomes, by consensus, a legal requirement because, in a very practical way, the reality of our thought is doubted. This has led, I suspect, to the development of a mistrust of our intuitional faculties. And intuition plays a vital role in creative thinking. The tree didnt fall on the forest floor not because no one reported as having heard or seen it or because no one later saw the growth of mushrooms in the area. Of course, depending upon the type of mushroom had they been seen and consumed the question of reality would have been moot. Neither inference nor possibly bogus certificate will prove legitimacy but the observation of the appropriate results will be a stronger indication and this requires intelligent perception which is the province of the creative mind not constrained by an algorithmic sequence of observed events. Even then it can be sometimes amusing to consider how the structure of reality might be were it dependent upon reportable human eye-witness. Being loyal to a thought process will likely prove in advantageous

I dont think the idea that meaning emerges out of the interaction between stimulus and thought, or better, evaluation is particularly new, in fact, we all know that it is not, but, perhaps, a more pertinent question might be why do we need such a periodic reminder of the fact? What inserts itself into a collective awareness that makes a reminder necessary? It is as if we had somehow lost our trust in the information our senses provide us and have become overwhelmed by doctrine and submissive to the call for obedience. Regrettably, however, and I do think that a most serious tactical intellectual error appears in footnote 2 where he submits to the uninformed popular understanding that abstract means the same as nonobjective. One might, by the hoi poly, be considered an intellectual snob by insisting, as much as is

possible, on the proper use of language and most especially so when the subject matter requires a careful delineation of meaning. But the practical matter is that there is no communication, or, at best, uncertain information communicated, if there is reduced agreement as to what the language means. This is an old story, as many of us who have read The Bible know. It was Satan, sometimes known as Lucifer (the angel of light and understanding) and later called the Devil advising the naked children of the Garden to go ahead and eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a consequence of this and the very many other anecdotal reports is that the only reasonable behaviour open to mankind, considering he is in the state of disobedience, is to check out everything...and then to check it out again, again and again.. As many reports seem to indicate that there is a high suicide rate among service men and women and in returning crippled veterans related, some seem to think, to the conflict of conscience resulting from orders to do what earlier training had told them was wrong to do. This is how one Vietnam veteran, a native of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, recounted to me when he needed to tell me why he was alcoholic. His explanation was that as a child he was told to pay attention to his own needs on this side of the mountain and not to interfere with others on the other side. Compelled to allow himself to be shipped not to the other side of the mountain, but to the other side of the world to a place where people had a different color, different life-style and told that he was to kill them. As he, personally, had had no strong motivation to kill anyone, most especially those he didnt know on any level a conflict of conscience was fostered. This, I think, may be similar to that

fate-in-progress of Bradley Manning the U.S.Army private talented in computer operations who leaked the video for public consumption of our service personnel killing civilians in Iraq. Aside from the fact that killing anyone or, in some cases, anything, one might well question why the killing of non-combatants should be underscored. As though to call to our attention that in a war it is allowable to kill....who says so? Now this fellow is in solitary confinement and has been for a very long time, which, in itself, constitutes a form of torture and finds the charges of treason mounting against him and, therefore, the possibility of his execution a forever dangling sword of Damocles..all of which certainly might be included as a sadistic government manoeuvre. The fact that he has been held in solitary is no

assurance that some in charge of his well-being might not impulsively visit him on occasion. To whom might he complain, confess or relate who might not also take advantage of his isolation? In so far as we are, in fact, a democracy, and those in power are our representatives, we then have condoned Bradley Mannings treatment.

Upon reflection, of course, it should be clear that the direction of flow of information would expectedly always be from the creator to the observer even while we credit the observer with high

level introspection/

I do realize, with not a little regret, that the subject matters I have drawn upon are somewhat more than diverse, but if the reader can view them as mere examples of the larger topic and that being the individuals search for identity, as opposed to an individuals search for a niche in the existing matrix then, possibly, all these aspects of the larger topic will take their proper places...whatever it, or they, may be. It is understandable that if one can think of a society as an organism it would, in all instances, probably act in a fashion that would tend to preserve whatever it is. If that were entirely, and incontestably true, however, we would not have, as we do have, periodic protests from within calling for better social arrangements. This does not mean that all such expressions of dissatisfaction have a legitimate basis for the motivation to promote social discord could find itself rooted in envy. It is this possibility that refers us once again to the desirability of establishing a range of acceptable meanings. The solution to the probable of social discord is not what Mark Runco. Director of the Torrance Creativity Center at The University of Georgia supports and terms discretion. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange would have achieved nothing had they been discrete and Teresa Amabile of Harvard, in all her discretion and hesitancy to call a spade a spade promotes the singularly unenlightening notion that cooperation is more productive that competition while begging he question of creativity all together and while she comes to this undeniably mundane conclusion having used as her testing population subjects that had already been self-selected as business types and thereby, having excluded the more indiscrete, socially challenging and unconventional individualistic types who prefer and who need , more solitude than conviviality, or the behavioural restrictions and requirements of such organizations, we have been told, as Skull and Bones., or, from my own experience at 13 or 14 years, when my father asked me if I wanted to join the junior division of The Masons. I recall two strong experiences from that question. The first was at the time of his asking my vivid remembrance returned of Fathers and Sons nights where a vast number of potbellied, cigar smoking boastful middle aged men and a group of shyly shrinking pubescent male kids a few of whom had been my tormentors. I remembered it well. What else I remember about the time he asked me if I wanted to become a member was his answer to my question. What are they, exactly? His answer was I cant tell you!. My father didnt even want to try to answer....which I found very unusual so after looking at him for a moment and he at me I asked: Why would you ask me if I wanted to join something which you couldnt tell me what it is? There was no answer. After seven decades I think I may have figured it out. Anyone who would join something they were not allowed to find out what it was would be prime material for slave hood and for occupying the position of political digit. It was, after all, an excellent question if one wanted to separate the sheep from the goats and the obedient from the independent. It is like asking someone wouldnt they like to have company and friends throughout their life and avoid being alone. The quality of the company doesnt even occur to anyone...which may explain a great deal about marriage. In terms of creative thinking however it is all important to be alone when you need to be. But this is not to deny those unusual moments when the mind wonders...even while in the company of others...perhaps observing events on a removed level and perhaps masking ones disinterest in the social chit chat when something is coincidently said, or something by chance occurs, and quite often when a word is as though plucked out of ones own mind by someone who is unaware of what he did and an important connection is made and the creative mind takes off from that event. In such an instance logic, that is algorithmic thinking so highly valued by the stupid, is an enemy of inspiration. While Mark Runco may value discretion as a social asset it has nothing to do with Paul Torrances interest in the role of mentor and I had never known Paul to be anything but discrete and his discretion was almost always accompanied by the expectation that a lie would not confront him. My understanding of Paul Torrance is that he ardently and consistently made every effort to keep evil thoughts, actions, temptations or events, almost always emanating from outside of himself,

from touching any aspect of his mundane or intellectual existence. To some extent even his research might be said to be characterized by a highly clinical, sterile and plastic glove approach to understanding and the implications of statistical correlations....but not the correlations of persons, only of characteristics. In this light, then, it is clearly understandable how Torrances reluctance to confront the inappropriate has so in great force invaded his intellectual legacy at The University of Georgia, firstly with the inappropriate appointment of Bonnie Cramond who seems to lack the knowledge of how to respond to a research proposal, Mark Runco who advocates teaching the creative mind to be polite, Theresa Amabile, who somehow seduced the genderly naive Torrance into awarding her some recognition and now Edward de Bonos six hats have found a nesting space at the Torrance Center...except for the Amabile all subsequent to his death...and somewhat reminiscent of Fellinis scene in Satyricon of the funeral pyre of a Roman requiring of his heirs that they eat his flesh. This image is mine, of course, and it is one Torrance would likely never have. Torrance and I never discussed this matter, in fact, it was not, it seems, Torrances interest in discussing anything with anybody on some informal and exploratory level. At the time that I was with him at The Bureau of Educational Research, that arrangement suited me very well as, by then, I had become as familiar with the operations of Minnesota University politics as I wished and I needed no further involvement. It would be another five years before my research at The University of Northern Iowa would be published (The Perceptive and Silenced Minorities) and then, not in a proper research journal but in a new political journal called Reason. I think my findings were certainly unpopular with the administration of the University at that time....after all, it had rather bluntly (and indiscreetly) indicated that the University was doing precisely the opposite of what it claimed it aimed to do. And when it came out that my immediately superior, using information badly and maliciously provided him by some faculty, that my source, but by no means my only or main one, J.P. Guilford, was a doubtfully reliable source and no respected in the academic community I was concerned but not worried until my superior indicated that he was unaware of Guilfords gender and because of the name Joy Paul thought him a female. I became immediately uncomfortable in those surroundings. I have frequently thought that perhaps I expect too much of people and that while a University President holds the respect of a great many people there is no, absolutely no, reasonable expectation that that degree of respect is warranted. It is more outrageous to expect legitimate academic respect being accorded a University President than it is a Departmental Chairman but only because the subject matter area of a department chairman is very much narrowed from that of a University President. I would suppose that throughout the populations of living things the need to physically survive is stronger than the need to learn and it may be this understanding that could account for the dominance of the role of propaganda in the annals of success as recognised or recorded in the poles of popular recognition...in other words the profile is one more of notoriety than real achievement..This was amusingly portrayed in the film: Nevertheless, when a University Professor is deeply involved in his work it is in appropriate that he should be distracted by malicious attacks being a device to draw him away from that work. Basically, however, it is not, in practice, knowledge or creative ability that defines successful academic administration, but power. It is the thoughtless trust in authority that is the enemy of truth. I once had an interview for a position at a Massachusetts State University. I believe it was Worcester and the interview took place in the office of the President. He sat at his desk; I sat in a chair opposite him and behind me by 10 or 15 feet sat another man. He was not introduced. The President began the interview and I felt distinctly uncomfortable with my back facing someone so I adjusted my chair to place them both in view, which, I had been taught, was the socially expected behavior. It was obvious they both found this move discomforting and it dawned on me that they had arranged the matter the way they had in order to better judge how amenable to control and accepting of dominance I might be. It might of interest to note that they were not in the least interested in what I might know A similar

device occurred at Southern Illinois University, and Charles Knox Martin, President of Radford University in Virginia, was very fond of using tactics of intimidation of students and faculty which ultimately gave him the state award for having been the states most controlling administrator, only the way the award was worded was more like having achieved a campus with the fewest problems. It would appear that in the matter of social control, and the avoidance of upsets and uprisings one has the choice of either, providing a peaceful, friendly, working environment where someone is able to enjoy the work he is hired to do, or maintaining order by the imposition of rules, regulations and commandments. In this regard it would appear that Einstein was correct that it is foolish to have faith in authority for they are an enemy to truth ...and I would add, comprehend only power, threat and punishment. Examples of organizational malformations are abundant at the public school level but one of the more bewildering examples occurred when a system in northern California, I believe it was San Jose, appointed the head of some computer programming and spam protection concern, one Mr. Bravo, to monitor the nature of incoming emails on the basis of their familiarity with the school teachers. In short, if the school teacher was unaware of an educational technique, source, or device it would automatically be denied access to the system. What this behaviour assumes is that the teachers already know what they need to know, there is nothing new they need to know and those educational leaders in that community are content to be unaware of the lack of understanding their placing a machine attendant in charge of the school curriculum. I think John Dewey might turn over in his grave.

It is to be expected that he might have developed some objections to the notion that it is only pragmatic to limit the information on instructional matters available to teachers. Certainly such an organized program of limiting potential hands-on experience would have been anathema to Dewey. But the definition of the pragmatic seems to have shifted from that of expanded conceptual awareness to merely behavioural control...........of everyone There are many ways of administering the punishment. For a year or two sometime in the seventies or eighties I enjoyed composing essay-like compositions on some timely topics and there was one time when I felt that while Mel Gibson may have acted indiscreetly (--after all we have already determined that it is impossible for creative thinkers to be discreet and discretion misses the whole point--) in telling off the Jewish cop in Malibu it certainly wasnt without malicious intent the cop made such a fuss about it. I also wonder whether he hadnt been paid off for his effort. I did feel that rather much to do was being created and I wondered why. In any event I wrote some lines about the matter and in my last statement suggested that since Mel Gibson enjoyed researching for his films that he might take an interest in researching the relationship between the Jews and the Khazars. The article appears one with everything intact, but after the first printing I got an email from Michael Odza of the Santa Fe New Mexican informing me that I was to banned from publishing more in that newspaper

for a period of four days (four days???). I dont recall ever having written that much.

Upon reflection I wondered who might have complained, and who might have had that much influence to have allowed the newspaper to deprive me of my constitutional rights for even four days. More importantly was the strong suggestion, by this banning, that in some way the relationship between the Jews and the Khazars was found by someone to have been worthy of and needing to be being kept secret and to whose benefit and whose detriment?.... otherwise why a secret? may be the Khazars are really not ethnic Jews and their population in Israel being 9 times that of the ethnic Jews there might raise questions in certain quarters of the American political environment. On yet another level if the assertion that what is here below is there above (or something on that order) has merit what might we imagine could be going on in Heaven if, of the present Jewish inhabitants of earthly Jerusalem, only 10% possess Semitic genes In any event Gibson probably knew all this anyway so why delete one short sentence from a letter to the editor? It does rather indicate the patriotic and all American attitude of the newspaper, however...as well as its deeply rooted hypocrisy. When Keith Sawyer of the Savannah College of Art and Design came up with the observation that when testing for the unknown (like who among a population may be creative) using the known ( which may already based on false assumptions) might be risky and certainly selecting a segment, a small segment, of the total population as Teresa Amabile has done to arrive at conclusions which she then applies to the entire, and much more diverse, population is clearly a performance contrary to the ethical outlines of the discipline and, without doubt, expressive of a prejudiced view of society which, by implication, suggests that if one doesnt fit the mold, one isnt a member of the club. Some of our leaders are cleverly playing a shell game with our perceptions and as some have already indicated the stakes are high.