As is the feeling,
So is the result.
Our leadership classes got inverted decades ago. Several reasons that happened, but the central one is that our true leadership classes lost self-confidence after uncritically imbibing leftist/progressive utopian drivel. Into the vacuum created by their abdication of responsibility flowed bumptious ruffians, parvenues, largely female, whose manners and mannerisms repelled from public service ever more should-be-refined personalities who were losing self-confidence on account of their utopian reading material.
So now, the weight of the true lower classes is crushing the true upper classes as an inverted pyramid does its apex.
What Codevilla calls the ruling class is in fact the criminal classes, as is evident, and what he calls the country class is in fact the leadership classes in a condition of irresponsible self-abuse from an absurd loss of self-confidence. Stick your head on your shoulders, kid, and walk straight forward unafraid to do what you know needs doing. Be.
In the Spring of 1972, and at the invitation of Earl and Barbara Marx Hubbard, I attended a conference at Southern Illinois University. The conference was a doing of the Marx’s Project Harvest Moon. The project aimed to induce NASA to gift the Hubbards and their friends a leftover Saturn 5 rocket and lunar module with which they could colonize earth’s moon.
In attendance were senior officials of several federal agencies, professors in fields of energy, engineering, and economics, and senior leaders in banking and finance. Peggy Huddleston and Jean Houston (and here and here) were in attendance as spiritual affairs experts.
During a late-conference panel/seminar session, some participants bemoaned projections of woe and misery for earth and her inhabitants, such as themselves, based on futures modeling then extant.
I asked to be recognized. Upon recognition, I rose and said that if data and projections give bleak results via modeling, change the software and get happy ones. This, as is said, did not go over well among the room’s occupants. One senior official of a federal agency or banking concern, and seated at table with me, spun round in his chair and said to me, with heavy sarcasm, When is Christmas?
At brunch on the next and last day of the conference, one of Barbara’s staff stood before me and said, Why did you ruin this conference? I do not remember my reply, if I made one. I remember my thought: I did not ruin this conference, your agenda did that.
Not long after, Earl and Barbara parted brass rags, NASA declared no Saturn 5s available, and Barbara continued to spend her considerable patrimony raising organizations to promote world peace. She self-promoted, unsuccessfully, as VP on the 1984 Democratic Party ticket for POTUS.
I was told in those days that Earl Hubbard, Barbara’s husband, is a kid brother or son of L. Ron Hubbard. One of those, I forget now which. Today I have been unable to confirm either as fact, which does not mean one of them is not fact.
However, it is curious, I believe, and confirmed as factual by me, that:
(1) Wikipedia has no entry for Earl,
(2) Wikipedia’s entry for Barbara mentions not Earl,*
(3) the website of his paintings maintained, presumably, by Earl’s estate mentions not Barbara, although it mentions their five children,
(4a) the NYT’s obit for Barbara mentions Earl cursorily,
(4b) the NYT has no obit for Earl, and
(5) no websites of organizations Barbara raised mention Earl.
Earl has been razed by Barbara and friends, Barbara has been razed by Earl and friends, and Barbara has more friends than Earl has.
I met Earl, personally, with Barbara, just them and me, at their NYC digs, which were voluminous and luxurious. They invited me there. It was Earl specifically, Barbara standing with him, who invited me to participate in their Project Harvest Moon conference planned for that Spring of 1972 at Southern Illinois University.
Earl was an estimable, considerable presence as well as a productive man, to include siring five children with Barbara.
(SIU was the academic home of Bucky Fuller [click here and search the page for fuller] at that time. Bucky I met, quite by happenstance, that same Spring, on a flight to Bombay. He was personable, gracious, humble, cherubic, a little guy wearing very thick-lensed glasses, there to consult on a dome project contemplated by persons wielding authority at Bombay.)
My observation: even though Barbara kept her married name unto death, she and many others took and take pains to erase her connection to her husband, Earl. The specifics as to why that is done I do not know and will not speculate regarding. I will observe that it is alienating, obtuse, and ungracious, in subversion of Barbara’s life-message: world peace.
* Similarly, the Wikipedia entry for Robert Theobald (The Triple Revolution), who was a friend, and for whom I wrote much of a book he published without my name (long story), mentions not his wife Jean Scott, a diminutive but estimable woman of Scots-English descent, whom I knew well when we all, and I with my then wife-in-name Mary Lynn, lived in NYC and then Arizona.
Jean named and she and Bob wrote Teg’s 1994, originally self-published by copy machine (Mary Lynn’s and my task). Teg is a contraction of Tegawitha, a heroine of Jean’s, which is curious because Jean claimed to be non-religious and had a Leftist’s antipathy towards clerical orders and a Feminista’s antipathy towards organization. Jean and Bob wrote Teg’s 1994 as antidote to Orwell’s 1984. Teg is Jean’s voice.
Internet-wise, Jean passed away, perhaps in Australia (?), unremarked. She was a formidable soul who deserves recognition as an history-maker.
I was completing seminary/graduate school, minding their apartment on Central Park West, during the 1968-1969 academic year, while Jean and Bob were in the South of France writing Teg’s 1994. Jean had frail lungs that functioned best in warm climes, a legacy of her childhood in WWII Great Britain.
They left NYC in Fall 1968 in order to avoid the winter and upon returning to the states in Spring 1969 settled in a guest house at Remuda Ranch, then a classic dude ranch in Wickenburg, AZ, now a rehab for girls with eating disorders.
Mary Lynn and I lived at an apartment complex in Phoenix from Summer 1969 to Summer 1970 then moved to Remuda Ranch in Wickenburg.
I ceased work with Rob and Jean in January 1971 because Jean turned hostile towards me. Later, I was told they divorced. Rob, as Jean referenced him in private, said frequently to me that Jean made his career. That was the truth.
He also frequently remarked, in passing, to audiences, My wife [Jean], who taught me everything I know, . . . . That throw-away line, oft repeated, was blatant waving to the gallery, pandering of the first water, but a kernel of sincerity lurked inside it, and truth. Without Jean, Rob ran in circles.
In fact, Rob was an expert barker, hustler mouthpiece for Jean’s ideas. He fairly worshiped her ideas and waited on her commands when they were chez Theobald. He had one idea, the guaranteed income. Others, attributed to Rob, were Jean’s. That was the inner working of their career together.
Bob’s meta-programming was the feeling of noblesse oblige characteristic of a Norman Englishman of Lesser Nobility and Indian birth. At six feet four inches and good lungs and posture, he had the build for it and was, as is said, to the manner born. One of his grandfathers was a Bishop for the Church of England.
Bob was generosity and grace up unto the occasion where he felt he had discharged his duties of noblesse oblige. Then he cut one off ruthlessly and without another thought.
Jean’s meta-programming, though of Scots descent, was that of French Jesuits given to plotting for and against others’ careers. She was good at it, if by good one means keen, skillful, assiduous, vindictive, ruthless, and long but not ultimately successful.
At just over five feet tall, generously-endowed with feminine attributes, vivacious, henna-haired, by turns honey-or poison-tongued, all instantly delivered, Jean collected a wardrobe chosen to flatter and betray her winsomeness. When she was out in public, which was rare, men gathered to Jean as horses to a hay wagon. She in fact loved to ride horses and was comfortable at that work, seated proudly atop a custom-made saddle Ray Bybee fashioned for her measurements and specifications.
Jean was a dish by any definition of that description. And brainy. Women she tended to shun and they her. And she preferred to stay at home, out of public view, happy that Robert was willing and able to work that role for the team. She belonged to the intellectual, academic, and spiritual lineage of Jacques Ellul (and here).
She knew she attracted and alienated people, flashing brilliance many could not welcome and giving some to expect of her what she was unwilling to produce. She lived mostly a hermit’s life in consequence of that self-knowledge, which was accurate.
Inside her circle, Jean would point out that she and Robert were a team, not a family. That was a fact. They produced no biological children so far as I know. They may not have married formally although by Common Law they certainly were married. They lived as one would expect a married couple to live.
Robert attended my ordination in Scottsdale, AZ early in the Spring of 1970. Jean did not.
From late in Bob’s life (Fall 1996), this interview, during which he references Jean, but not by name, covers well Jean’s and his thinking, and lack thereof.
After I parted brass rags with Jean Scott and Robert Theobald, in January 1971, Gregory Bateson wrote me regarding Robert and me (I am paraphrasing), If you can’t make this work, how can any of us?
Gregory was admitting, upside-down and backwards, that the New Age vision of evolved consciousness forever banishing poverty, war, disease, and injustice was unrealistic, utopian, a true and reliable no-where. I replied, most ungraciously and hypocritically, to my regret and sorrow ever since, with an impertinence regarding his chain-smoking cigarettes.
Yet, Hubbards and Theobalds persisted, chasing their vision to their graves, the while seeding it in not a few others.
That Jean Scott receives not a mention in her husband’s, Robert Theobald’s, Wikipedia entry and his latter-day friends’ reminiscences of him is an atrocity typical of ideologues, as were Rob and Jean and Earl and Barbara — bless their restless, questing souls — and as remain their latter-day friends. RIP.
My observation: even though Jean kept her maiden name unto death, perhaps she and for sure others took and take pains to erase her connection to her husband, Robert. The specifics as to why that is done I do not know and will not speculate regarding. I will observe that it is alienating, obtuse, and ungracious, in subversion of her and Robert’s life-message: synergistic cooperation.
Not wanting God is a dangerous business.
Rama and Kama don’t go hand in hand.
Somewhat in contrast to the Hubbards and Theobalds was a grand Lady named Jane Blaffer Owen. Jane I met, at her invitation, in New Harmony, Indiana during January of 2007. Instead of working to concretize a vision of world peace or synergistic cooperation, Jane worked to preserve and platform past and present examples of the same.
She rebuilt the town of New Harmony, Indiana in reverence for and quiet witness to theological, architectural, horticultural, and spiritual excellence in virtues such as beauty, trust, vivacity, grace, and insight. When Earl/Barbara Marx Hubbard sought peace and Jean Scott/Robert Theobald sought cooperation, Jane Blaffer Owen provided both, and in public view for the enjoyment and edification of all.
They were, in public at least, worldly mystics looking to futurists for salvation. She was, in public and private, a devout Episcopalian looking to God for salvation. Their heroes were technocrats. Her hero was Paul Tillich.
Jane Blaffer Owen — Paulus’ friend and benefactor and daughter of Humble Oil principal Robert L. Blaffer — and her husband and husband’s ancestor Robert Owen stamped New Harmony with ecumenical rather than partisan Christianity.
The area, while depressed economically, is charmingly rural. It manifests both farming and schools of various kinds. And the town is chock-a-block with Jane Blaffer Owen’s love-saturated architectural and horticultural explorations of New Being (and here) and The Religion of the Concrete Spirit.
New Harmony, Indiana sits on the east bank of the Wabash River, which is both beautiful and, shall we say, impetuous. The town’s devotion to general education and independence, particularly of women and workingmen, is centuries deep and in keeping with its Christian ecumenism. Its utopian socialist roots and more recent Episcopalian ethos — from Jane Blaffer Owen — align fragmentarily and anticipatorily with this Era of Sanathana Dharma.
Jane and her record through time embrace her husband, their children biological and spiritual, her father and forbears, and her husband’s forebears. She raised many and razed none. Were she versified, this might not be amiss:
Have courage, my friend, to just be,
Have courage, my friend, to just be;
Have courage, my friend,
Have courage, my friend,
Have courage, my friend, to just be.
Jane’s theological mentor and mine is most widely known, literarily, for his volume The Courage To Be (German: Der Mut Zu Sein). This still well-loved and still modern-speaking opus was published in 1952 as an expansion of The Rev. Dr. Paulus Johannes Tillich’s Terry Foundation lectures given at Yale University in 1950.
Bruce Bawer: An Open Letter to the D.C. Right
As children of the earth, people should learn the lesson of tyaga (selfless activity) from Mother Earth. Without sacrifice, it is difficult to sustain life itself. Some say knowledge is valuable. But character is more valuable than knowledge. One may be a learned scholar, one may hold high positions of authority, one may be very wealthy or be an eminent scientist, but if one has no character all the other acquisitions are of no use at all. Sacrifice, love, compassion and forbearance are the sterling human qualities that should be fostered, shedding jealousy, hatred, ego and anger, which are animal qualities. What is the use of being born as a man and leading a life of birds and beasts? You should maintain equanimity in pleasure and pain, loss or gain. Without pain, you cannot enjoy pleasure. Sorrow is verily the royal road to joy. Sufferings are the stepping stones that lead man towards virtuous conduct. One should neither be elated by pleasure not dejected by pain.
Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, April 11, 1994 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
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