Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
When I was at seminary (Union Theological, NYC, 1965-1969) I took a course by a strange but brilliant P named Peter Putnam. It was on systems theory and theology. I ended up writing my thesis on congruences of OT theology and systems theory, but not for Putnam, for a P in the OT department.
During and after my senior year at Union, I worked with and ghosted for a Brit resident alien named Robert Theobald and his then-wife Jean Scott, who was of Scots descent. Bob was a high-born Brit Socialist (Fabian/Keynsian Communist) from India, Cambridge and Madrassa Harvard (student of JK Galbraith), never deviating from his socialist credo. He was known then for promoting the guaranteed income, government as employer of last resort and “problem/possibility focusers,” which were PC indoctrination materials. He had support from the Stone Foundation in Chicago.
Bob introduced me to the writings of Gregory Bateson. Google him. Gregory had been married to Margaret Mead and their union had an issue, a girl who became know in her own right and also for her devotion to her father.
Bateson and Putnam ignited my interest in systems theory. The fact that an uncle of mine was career IBM (their glory days) and then-worked top-side IBM corporate management also compelled me to that end.
I learned a great deal from Bateson and later his daughter by Maggie. And from Putnam, but more, I think, from Bateson.
His work that I saw, thanks to Theobald, was then-classified. I do not know its current status. Navy. Waimanalo. Palo Alto VA Hospital.
Gregory was among the few icons those days who really wanted to help mankind. Not an ideologue, such as Maggie. He was an atheist, probably, but he appreciated the great Christian theologians such as Augustine for their grasp of the human condition and its phenomenology. He was keen to look at phenomena straight in the eye. I admired him for that quality then and I admire him now for it.
I’m a certifiable, museum quality nobody but, as Riehl would say, that’s how I roll regarding Bateson.
Next, Teilhard. Also during my senior year at Union (1968-1969) I picked up Phenomenon of Man. I do not remember what drove me to do that, whether it was external or internal. (During my first two years at Union my primary reading, as I recall, was Ian Fleming!) I was all of one afternoon trying to grasp the first page, titled “Seeing.” I did not get it. I stuck at it and was rewarded.
Teilhard and Bateson, plus other Providence, drove me from Theobald in 1971 and from the United Church of Christ, in which my ordination occurred (1970, Scottsdale, AZ), as well.
Sathya Sai Baba. Then read, read, read, think, think, think.
Goethe. Likewise.
Kandinsky. Likewise.
GEN of the Army Douglas MacArthur. Likewise.
GEN George Kenny. Likewise.
Chartres Cathedral. Likewise.
Glenn Gould. Likewise.
Barbara Thiering. Likewise.
The Rev. Mark Durie. Likewise.
Wittgenstein and Cage were strong intellectual influences, which will probably scandalize the puritanical.
Wife and children compelled me to develop a homeschooling curriculum, for, I know by then that public and private schools are corrupt and uninterested in rearing an educated citizenry. Two enter and graduate from West Point, increasing my already keen interest in military-theological congruences and support. Considerable effort I devoted and devote to supporting West Point, learning all the time to think as what I — and Kant before me, perhaps first of all — call Theological Geography.
Once grounding in a field of one’s choice — not an ego-trip, a field of consequential inquiry — is complete, then one learns from direct observation in the university of life — or one does not.
Observation is participation. C.f. Heisenberg Principle. There is impartiality, with effort, but no “objectivity.” Subject and object never separate.
An old insight has it that any starting point leads to the same goal. In a way, that is true, or can be. But only in a deep sense. Superficial inquiry leads to disparate and superficial goals. Inquiry of any kind, to be useful, is pursued as far as one can take it. Then farther. The dishonesty of modern academe is attenuated inquiry. It may be the dishonesty of academe per se, in fact, or at least most of it.
The most intractable of prides is pride of scholarship. This is a deep irony that discerning students and teachers recognize and do all in their power to remediate. Civilization is threatened by the very people meant to uphold it.
Writing I have done was online but is now off except for the homeschooling curriculum (http://www.adwaitha-hermitage.net/home.html). IMO, my crucial contribution to our mutual welfare is the reformation of the academic curriculum graciously published by my friend Bob Belvedere earlier this month.
The realization that a demagogue needs a strong enemy to maintain their strength and position came to me during an intern year from Union (1967-1968) at my alma mater, University of Redlands, as Assistant Chaplain (not ordained). This was reinforced recently by my wife’s and my discovery of a delightful Brit TV movie, Sleepers.
For current affairs — observing developments — my daily perusal is The Camp Of The Saints, The Other McCain, Legal Insurrection, Instapundit, DrudgeReport and Power Line.
Today, 20MAY12, was a fine day in the blogosphere. Both prongs of the pincer movement launched by the vast alien conspiracy against civilization were exposed to strong illumination. This will have felicitous consequences.
Update 1: An A-Z Guide To The New PC.
Update 2: In May 1970 I was in Phoenix, soon to move to Wickenburg, researching a book for Robert Theobald: Habit and Habitat. Before the book completed and was published (1972), Theobald ripped up my research (January 1971), literally, telling me no one would believe it.
My source was The New York Times.
I parted brass rags with Bob, informed the editor, asking him to remove my name from the project and book, and renounced claim to royalties. My part of the advance was not recalled because I completed my work. Bob published the volume under his name with glancing inclusion of my research.
I was as interested in anti-war protests then as I am now: zero. Never struck me as more than small-potatoes intrinsically and extrinsically mostly glandular turbulence. And, for a steadily increasing number of drug-addled visionaries, anti-war protests embodied lefties’ well-led (by KGB for one reason, CIA for another) brazen and ruthless march against Christian culture. That march, then and still — not anti-war protests — strikes me as big-potatoes.
And incidentally, industrial and agricultural pollution in 1970 also was big-potatoes. It was so big it presented lefties with a target opportunity they could not possibly fail to miss or exploit. I had documented a book’s-worth of it.
Update 3: Updates to Department of Education and Department of Justice Guidance on Title VI
Update 4: The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie: Ishmael Is Not The Father Of The Arabs
Update 5: Myron Ebell and Steven J. Milloy: Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
