Wow! It's been almost a month since I last wrote.
I've come across some good stuff, but haven't thought to blog it. And, ironically, here is something not so amazing, in that it has been available to the wide world for a long time. Still, it's interesting: a letter from John W. Campbell, the fabled science fiction editor, to noted Fortean Eric Frank Russell, attempting to synthesize Fort and L. Ron Hubbard. It's from the first volume of Campbell's collected letters:
October 1, 1952
Dear Eric: First off, let’s get this business of Mark Clifron’s story straightened away, as to why it’s what I want.
I’m trying to introduce the proposition of sciences beyond those currently known and accepted.
But Eric PLEASE believe me; Charles Fort made a mistake. The error was his. He _inistsed_ that the scientists understand him when he explained it all to them in Swahili. He even repeated it in Hindustani, and still the dolts wouldn’t listen to him. The one thing//69//he didn’t try was to exlain it in their stupid old language; it was obviously up to them to learn _his_ language, because he had something important to say.
So his words weren’t actually Swahili or Hindustani; they were just as remote from the language the scientists speak. The words of a high Episcopal prayer are English also, but they still do _not_ constitute prpoer form of expression for publication, as a communication of intelligence, in the _Physical Review_.
Also, Fort began screaming at the scientists, and calling them names. Now if a man starts screaming at you, and calling you and your company names, your first reaction is, I imagine, that the gentleman has a psychological proble. As a matter of good business, in your line of work, you’ll attempt to placate him. Difficult--sometimes impossible--but it usually can be done.
I have an idea on how to build a nuclear reactor that will be a power producing breeder reactor, giving 98% or better utilization of neutrons. Very simple design too. I should, then, go down to the AEC office and demand that they listen to me, and scream names at them, pointing out that they are dolts, imbeciles, and dishonest, unwilling to listen to a really brilliant intellect?
Fort refused to take the trouble to translate his observations into coherent language--language of science. He made the mistake. If you have something to say, it’s up to _you_ to say it right. I have hundreds of letters every year saying ‘I have a wonderful idea for a story; it just needs to be written up. I’d like to get in touch with someone who can write it down, and we can share the proceeds on a 50-50basis.’
If you feel that merely pointing out that something exists constitutes half or more of the work, I’ll gladly put you in touch with a few score people who’d be happy to point out that something exists and you can ‘write it down’ for them.
Look, Eric: Maybe Copernicus and astrophysics are all wrong. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that they’re right.
Then: The stars and planets have been visible from Earth for some 1000 million years. (Assuming it took the first 2000 million to develop eyes that could see them.) The stars were pointed out long, long before villages existed. The moon was pointed out before that. There’s the data; look at it. Anybody with a single eye can see it.
After many, many millenia of hard thinking, people finally worked out a scheme of interrelating the observations ot a point where they made intelligible sense. And some some ages-gone-caveman can say ‘Ugh. The dumb fools. I told ‘em stars were things to look at. Important. Dumb bastards should of done it when I said so.’//70//
There are three steps to making a real authority:
1. He must be able to communicate to another mind, the understanding he has in mind.
2. He must be able to think clearly and cogently, manipulating his data honestly and usefully.
3. He must have data to manipulate.
The British Museum has more data than any single human being who ever lived. That makes it smart?
The mystic who thinks things through and gets an answer that works is smart; since he can’t communicate it, however, he doesn’t benefit mankind much.
It counts when you can reach an understanding that is valid, and communicate that understanding to others.
Fort couldn’t. He did it wrong. He angered the best thinkers, the clearest, straightest-thinking minds who could have helped most. His writings appealed largely to muzzy-minded people who went in for fortune-telling, crystal-ball readings, and the like; they were the bulk of his audience.
Fort’s attitude was jusr as ineffective as Hubbard’s; Hubbard angered the psychiatrists by his belligerence. true; he may well have had reason for being angry at them--but ti didn’t get him anywhere to make them refuse to listen to him for two reasons instead of for one, did it?
Now: The scientists today will _not_ accept psionic phenomena as valid data. They won’t fit anywhere in his universe, and his picture of things, as it stands, fairly coherent and integrated. (The psionic effects actually belong at a level below the sub-nuclear; physical science simply was _not_ ready to study them when Fort was yammering so insistently. It was like somebody yammering at a kid in school, who’s just learned his multiplication tables, that he should immediately start studying differential equations. The kid is apt tp rebel.)
Since they won’t fit into his cosmology, he can ignore them while he nusily does some damned useful things with what he has. Fort was insisting that someone else do the work of integrating them, and refusing to organize and interpret the dara into intelligible stuff himself. For that, Fort should have been shown the door. He was too lazy to do the hard work; he wanted it done for him, and was very petulant because no one would. It was too damned much of a case of ‘Let’s you and him have a fight, huh?’
His data was valid. It contained important understandings, and important clues. In that, he was right. But why didn’t _he_ do some of the hard work of integrating it and finding the pattern, instead of frothing about how everyone else wouldn’t do that work?
For your information, Peg [Campbell] and I have done it, We [sic] have the basic//71//understanding of what the psionic functions are, and how they work. It took us over two years of damned hard work. The reason why I’m now starting it in the magazine is that I do have some integrated udnerstanding of what we’re dealing with. I’m not yet ready to say a damned thing about it, either, becuase we recognize that Fort _was_ wrong and why he was wrong, and what the right answer is. Until I can demonstrate the phenomena myself, and communicate the exact nature of the mechanisms involved, with demonstrations of each step, I’m not ready to talk. When I’ve done that, though, by God the physical scientists _will_ gladly pitch in and help. I know the general concept of teleportation, levitation, and a few other spontaneous psi phenomena--also telekinesis, etc. In addition, I know the general basic laws which can permit precognition, and an absolute barrier of pure force that will block passage of _any_ force now known to physical science. The fundamental clues are to be found in many places; among the places are the sort of data Fort collected--but was too stinking lazy to dig into and integrate himself.
I am not kidding.
I am not cracked, either.
Those forces are real, and I have a theory of their structure. I haven’t developed methods of setting up an experiment however, and until I can demonstrate it at an experimental level, it simply doesn’t count. I’ve only progressed as far as the theory level. This is for your private information and to let you know part of the reason for the attitude I am not adopting.
I have a hunch that Fort was scared blue woth pink polka-dots of getting anywhere near those forces; he probably contacted some of it accidentally during early childhood, got smaked down by it, and wouldn’t ever go near it again himself. Those forces lie beneath the sub-nuclear particles; uranium fission is a gentle release of a side-swipe of a minor readjustment of those forces. Get careless, or frisky with them, and you’ll get your come-_way_-uppance.
So. The principle point is this; the _Fortean_ approach was invalid, because it demanded that somebody else do the work. To hell woth that; roll up your sleeves, if you think its important, and git [sic] in and pitch.
The approach I’m planning on is entirely different. It’s based on a funda,mental law of life: Do not waste energy on an unproductive task, It’s corollary is that if a task promises adquate [sic] reward, it’s worth attempting.
Fort didn’t point otu the rewards; he pointed out the task. ‘What’s in it for me?’ is a valid question. What reward does this task promise, and what’s the probability of earning that reward?
So; the first step towrd getting interestt in psionics started is to//72//establish _that there is a reward to be earned._
Now since, at the present time, people don’t want to learn about psionics, there’s still an earlier task facing us, if we want to get them to learn. We have to establish that learnign abot them has an adequate reward.
So how do we do that?
We have a very amusing story about a plant psychologist all tangled up with a bunch of psionic operatives. Reward for considering, for the moment, that psionics might be reak: amusement.
Reward for repeatedly considering--and discussing--the possibilities and possible useful applications of psionics: more amusement.
reward for considering that psionic forces are real, and actually constitute a level of forces below that sub-nucleonic; amuseument, plus a hint of satisfying, yet intriguing, possibility.
Reward for getting hold of the idea and actually accepting it; anti-gravity; teleportation, which makes the concept of distance and velocity alike meaningless; psychokinesis; absolute physical health, and death only when as chosen as a conscious desire.
But do not mention those last rewards. Makes it look too much like a gold-brick. The rewards to mention are the little things, the just-over-the-edge-of-the-known items like anti-gravity.
O.K. we [sic] are advancing at a creep instead of a march. When you’re climbing a vertical cliff, trying to rise from one level to the next higher, you creep if you want to get anywhere.
Want to creep along with us?
I’ve been looking into my own aberrations right along. One I foudn the other night will, I’m sure, inetrest you. I have been consistently refusing to see the undesirable and unpleansat in people. I’ve idealized and gilded people, at the conscious level. I’m going to have to do a lot of reevaluating people, in consequence, and I have already changed a number of opinions in some degree.
Some evidence, however, is lacking; I’m not sure whether it is possible to take a normal intelligence and raise it’ I am not sure whether it is possible to take any normal human intelligence and raise it--if the guy wants to take the trouble to do it for himself.
You know that psychosomatron story idea I sent? That’s the problem; it means changing your entire personality, and being not the mane you are, but the man-you-could-develop-into. Some of the characteristics of that man-you-could-be are anathema to the man-you-are. The eesntial problem will be whetehr an individual is _willing_ to choose to work--and brother, it’s the hardest work there is! To become his maximum possible self.
The brain, as it is, is not perfect--but has the inherent capability//73//of perfecting itself. It’s like a servo mechanism that, when started up is way off zero, but had built into it such characteristics that, no matter where it starts, it’s capable of adjusting itself to zero. The mind has that characteristic.
Essentially, it achieves it by a recycling process, and the method of successive approximations. The actual logical thinking is _not_ done by the brain, it’s done by a psionic structure, of pure force. It’s instantaneous in action, and complex enough to handle a billion equations in a billion unknowns in a microsecond. The consequence is that an immense number of recyclings can be done in a very short time; the successive approximations can get very close indeed to the exact data fact--_provided_ no blocks have been nailed down solid. If you have a nailed-down, riveted home, and capped in place proposition that Sex is Nasty, and Thinking about Sex is also Nasty, you can then think very consciously and rationally that sex is _not_ nasty--but the psionic computers still have the postualte that sex is nasty, and they won’t touch the problem. One consequence of that is when the Victorian orientation moved out, couples found they were sleeping three in a bed; the woman, the man, and the psychiatrist’s ghost, lecturing them both, very consciously, on how they should engage in intercourse.
This interferes with conjugal bliss.
Eventually we’ll get the psychiatrist’s ghosts out of our bedrooms again, I imagine. It used to be the priest’s ghost, back in the days when the Church taught that the ideal was chastity though married.
But once you pull the false posulate out--really get it out--the automatic computers start recycling all problems involving that concept. And lordeee! Do they run the stuff in a hurry.
I recognize different levels fo competence in human beings. But the inherent self-perfection capability is also there; I don’t yet know, but suspect, that the ability actually leads to a self-expanding system that allows any mind over a certain level to become whatever it chooses to become.
And it’s not necessary to use surgery to cure a twisted mind; a mind cna be twisted by actual brain damage, but most twists are caused by a far simpler, and more basic thing--a false idea.
Take this one; A lot of people hold that if you are happy, it means you’re not being ethical, but are yielding to your own pleasure drives. This makes ‘being unhappy’ equal to ‘being ethical.’ Such a twist makes a man impose unhappiness on himself, and that inevitably include his wife and children, his employees and his friends. He will make them unhappy for the good of their souls, so they too, can have the satisfaction of being ethical.//74//
Now ther’s nothing wrong with his _brain_ his only trouble is that he has the false postulate that it is essential tp be unhappy. Many people judge the state of their ethics, and how well they are following them, by how unhappy they are making themselves. This type is the long-suffering-patient-man, type.
But there isn’t a thing wrong with his brain, and surgery is totally unnecessary. It is only necessary for him to find out what in God’s name ever gave him that cockeyed idea? It certainly isn’t sense, but he has never checked on himself deeply to see just how he does determine whether a thing is ethical or not. It’s apt to shock him when he finds out!
On problem solving:
There are two general motivations people display for solvig problems:
1. To keep from being hurt.
2. To achieve pleasure.
A human being who operates on the avoid-pain drive is not enjoying life adequately. Something’s bothering him severely, and he hasn’t located it.
The right answer is to enjoy problems, and solve them _for reward of satisfaction._
Both Peg and I had that aberration; I think nearly everyone in our civilization operates on the avoid-pain drive. To keep from starving. To avoid loss of my honor. To pay off the mortgage.
Too little ‘To see what’s beyond the hill. To find out why it works that way. To see if I can make the darned thing work. Just for the hell of it.’
It has made an enormous difference to us since we cracked that aberration. I _was_ doing the work involved in straightening out my mind in order to be able to handle life. To escape the feeling of incompetence and stupidity. I _am_ doing it because notheing I ever tackled before had anywhere near the zest, the high, fine sense of discovery and accomplishment that this has. It’s the damnedest adventure anyone ever tried--and it’s available as near as the nearest quiet room, where there is a fully sympathetic and understanding co-adventurer.
You might try looking and seeing if maybe someone hasn’t planted on you, very solidly, the idea that solving problems is a _you must or else_ proposiiton.
In any case, I can assure you--it’s a damned lie. You don’t have to solve problems--but there’s no satisfaction like that that comes from a nicely cracked prpblem, as the pieces go trickling down into the appropriate mental files.
Regards, John.
I've come across some good stuff, but haven't thought to blog it. And, ironically, here is something not so amazing, in that it has been available to the wide world for a long time. Still, it's interesting: a letter from John W. Campbell, the fabled science fiction editor, to noted Fortean Eric Frank Russell, attempting to synthesize Fort and L. Ron Hubbard. It's from the first volume of Campbell's collected letters:
October 1, 1952
Dear Eric: First off, let’s get this business of Mark Clifron’s story straightened away, as to why it’s what I want.
I’m trying to introduce the proposition of sciences beyond those currently known and accepted.
But Eric PLEASE believe me; Charles Fort made a mistake. The error was his. He _inistsed_ that the scientists understand him when he explained it all to them in Swahili. He even repeated it in Hindustani, and still the dolts wouldn’t listen to him. The one thing//69//he didn’t try was to exlain it in their stupid old language; it was obviously up to them to learn _his_ language, because he had something important to say.
So his words weren’t actually Swahili or Hindustani; they were just as remote from the language the scientists speak. The words of a high Episcopal prayer are English also, but they still do _not_ constitute prpoer form of expression for publication, as a communication of intelligence, in the _Physical Review_.
Also, Fort began screaming at the scientists, and calling them names. Now if a man starts screaming at you, and calling you and your company names, your first reaction is, I imagine, that the gentleman has a psychological proble. As a matter of good business, in your line of work, you’ll attempt to placate him. Difficult--sometimes impossible--but it usually can be done.
I have an idea on how to build a nuclear reactor that will be a power producing breeder reactor, giving 98% or better utilization of neutrons. Very simple design too. I should, then, go down to the AEC office and demand that they listen to me, and scream names at them, pointing out that they are dolts, imbeciles, and dishonest, unwilling to listen to a really brilliant intellect?
Fort refused to take the trouble to translate his observations into coherent language--language of science. He made the mistake. If you have something to say, it’s up to _you_ to say it right. I have hundreds of letters every year saying ‘I have a wonderful idea for a story; it just needs to be written up. I’d like to get in touch with someone who can write it down, and we can share the proceeds on a 50-50basis.’
If you feel that merely pointing out that something exists constitutes half or more of the work, I’ll gladly put you in touch with a few score people who’d be happy to point out that something exists and you can ‘write it down’ for them.
Look, Eric: Maybe Copernicus and astrophysics are all wrong. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that they’re right.
Then: The stars and planets have been visible from Earth for some 1000 million years. (Assuming it took the first 2000 million to develop eyes that could see them.) The stars were pointed out long, long before villages existed. The moon was pointed out before that. There’s the data; look at it. Anybody with a single eye can see it.
After many, many millenia of hard thinking, people finally worked out a scheme of interrelating the observations ot a point where they made intelligible sense. And some some ages-gone-caveman can say ‘Ugh. The dumb fools. I told ‘em stars were things to look at. Important. Dumb bastards should of done it when I said so.’//70//
There are three steps to making a real authority:
1. He must be able to communicate to another mind, the understanding he has in mind.
2. He must be able to think clearly and cogently, manipulating his data honestly and usefully.
3. He must have data to manipulate.
The British Museum has more data than any single human being who ever lived. That makes it smart?
The mystic who thinks things through and gets an answer that works is smart; since he can’t communicate it, however, he doesn’t benefit mankind much.
It counts when you can reach an understanding that is valid, and communicate that understanding to others.
Fort couldn’t. He did it wrong. He angered the best thinkers, the clearest, straightest-thinking minds who could have helped most. His writings appealed largely to muzzy-minded people who went in for fortune-telling, crystal-ball readings, and the like; they were the bulk of his audience.
Fort’s attitude was jusr as ineffective as Hubbard’s; Hubbard angered the psychiatrists by his belligerence. true; he may well have had reason for being angry at them--but ti didn’t get him anywhere to make them refuse to listen to him for two reasons instead of for one, did it?
Now: The scientists today will _not_ accept psionic phenomena as valid data. They won’t fit anywhere in his universe, and his picture of things, as it stands, fairly coherent and integrated. (The psionic effects actually belong at a level below the sub-nuclear; physical science simply was _not_ ready to study them when Fort was yammering so insistently. It was like somebody yammering at a kid in school, who’s just learned his multiplication tables, that he should immediately start studying differential equations. The kid is apt tp rebel.)
Since they won’t fit into his cosmology, he can ignore them while he nusily does some damned useful things with what he has. Fort was insisting that someone else do the work of integrating them, and refusing to organize and interpret the dara into intelligible stuff himself. For that, Fort should have been shown the door. He was too lazy to do the hard work; he wanted it done for him, and was very petulant because no one would. It was too damned much of a case of ‘Let’s you and him have a fight, huh?’
His data was valid. It contained important understandings, and important clues. In that, he was right. But why didn’t _he_ do some of the hard work of integrating it and finding the pattern, instead of frothing about how everyone else wouldn’t do that work?
For your information, Peg [Campbell] and I have done it, We [sic] have the basic//71//understanding of what the psionic functions are, and how they work. It took us over two years of damned hard work. The reason why I’m now starting it in the magazine is that I do have some integrated udnerstanding of what we’re dealing with. I’m not yet ready to say a damned thing about it, either, becuase we recognize that Fort _was_ wrong and why he was wrong, and what the right answer is. Until I can demonstrate the phenomena myself, and communicate the exact nature of the mechanisms involved, with demonstrations of each step, I’m not ready to talk. When I’ve done that, though, by God the physical scientists _will_ gladly pitch in and help. I know the general concept of teleportation, levitation, and a few other spontaneous psi phenomena--also telekinesis, etc. In addition, I know the general basic laws which can permit precognition, and an absolute barrier of pure force that will block passage of _any_ force now known to physical science. The fundamental clues are to be found in many places; among the places are the sort of data Fort collected--but was too stinking lazy to dig into and integrate himself.
I am not kidding.
I am not cracked, either.
Those forces are real, and I have a theory of their structure. I haven’t developed methods of setting up an experiment however, and until I can demonstrate it at an experimental level, it simply doesn’t count. I’ve only progressed as far as the theory level. This is for your private information and to let you know part of the reason for the attitude I am not adopting.
I have a hunch that Fort was scared blue woth pink polka-dots of getting anywhere near those forces; he probably contacted some of it accidentally during early childhood, got smaked down by it, and wouldn’t ever go near it again himself. Those forces lie beneath the sub-nuclear particles; uranium fission is a gentle release of a side-swipe of a minor readjustment of those forces. Get careless, or frisky with them, and you’ll get your come-_way_-uppance.
So. The principle point is this; the _Fortean_ approach was invalid, because it demanded that somebody else do the work. To hell woth that; roll up your sleeves, if you think its important, and git [sic] in and pitch.
The approach I’m planning on is entirely different. It’s based on a funda,mental law of life: Do not waste energy on an unproductive task, It’s corollary is that if a task promises adquate [sic] reward, it’s worth attempting.
Fort didn’t point otu the rewards; he pointed out the task. ‘What’s in it for me?’ is a valid question. What reward does this task promise, and what’s the probability of earning that reward?
So; the first step towrd getting interestt in psionics started is to//72//establish _that there is a reward to be earned._
Now since, at the present time, people don’t want to learn about psionics, there’s still an earlier task facing us, if we want to get them to learn. We have to establish that learnign abot them has an adequate reward.
So how do we do that?
We have a very amusing story about a plant psychologist all tangled up with a bunch of psionic operatives. Reward for considering, for the moment, that psionics might be reak: amusement.
Reward for repeatedly considering--and discussing--the possibilities and possible useful applications of psionics: more amusement.
reward for considering that psionic forces are real, and actually constitute a level of forces below that sub-nucleonic; amuseument, plus a hint of satisfying, yet intriguing, possibility.
Reward for getting hold of the idea and actually accepting it; anti-gravity; teleportation, which makes the concept of distance and velocity alike meaningless; psychokinesis; absolute physical health, and death only when as chosen as a conscious desire.
But do not mention those last rewards. Makes it look too much like a gold-brick. The rewards to mention are the little things, the just-over-the-edge-of-the-known items like anti-gravity.
O.K. we [sic] are advancing at a creep instead of a march. When you’re climbing a vertical cliff, trying to rise from one level to the next higher, you creep if you want to get anywhere.
Want to creep along with us?
I’ve been looking into my own aberrations right along. One I foudn the other night will, I’m sure, inetrest you. I have been consistently refusing to see the undesirable and unpleansat in people. I’ve idealized and gilded people, at the conscious level. I’m going to have to do a lot of reevaluating people, in consequence, and I have already changed a number of opinions in some degree.
Some evidence, however, is lacking; I’m not sure whether it is possible to take a normal intelligence and raise it’ I am not sure whether it is possible to take any normal human intelligence and raise it--if the guy wants to take the trouble to do it for himself.
You know that psychosomatron story idea I sent? That’s the problem; it means changing your entire personality, and being not the mane you are, but the man-you-could-develop-into. Some of the characteristics of that man-you-could-be are anathema to the man-you-are. The eesntial problem will be whetehr an individual is _willing_ to choose to work--and brother, it’s the hardest work there is! To become his maximum possible self.
The brain, as it is, is not perfect--but has the inherent capability//73//of perfecting itself. It’s like a servo mechanism that, when started up is way off zero, but had built into it such characteristics that, no matter where it starts, it’s capable of adjusting itself to zero. The mind has that characteristic.
Essentially, it achieves it by a recycling process, and the method of successive approximations. The actual logical thinking is _not_ done by the brain, it’s done by a psionic structure, of pure force. It’s instantaneous in action, and complex enough to handle a billion equations in a billion unknowns in a microsecond. The consequence is that an immense number of recyclings can be done in a very short time; the successive approximations can get very close indeed to the exact data fact--_provided_ no blocks have been nailed down solid. If you have a nailed-down, riveted home, and capped in place proposition that Sex is Nasty, and Thinking about Sex is also Nasty, you can then think very consciously and rationally that sex is _not_ nasty--but the psionic computers still have the postualte that sex is nasty, and they won’t touch the problem. One consequence of that is when the Victorian orientation moved out, couples found they were sleeping three in a bed; the woman, the man, and the psychiatrist’s ghost, lecturing them both, very consciously, on how they should engage in intercourse.
This interferes with conjugal bliss.
Eventually we’ll get the psychiatrist’s ghosts out of our bedrooms again, I imagine. It used to be the priest’s ghost, back in the days when the Church taught that the ideal was chastity though married.
But once you pull the false posulate out--really get it out--the automatic computers start recycling all problems involving that concept. And lordeee! Do they run the stuff in a hurry.
I recognize different levels fo competence in human beings. But the inherent self-perfection capability is also there; I don’t yet know, but suspect, that the ability actually leads to a self-expanding system that allows any mind over a certain level to become whatever it chooses to become.
And it’s not necessary to use surgery to cure a twisted mind; a mind cna be twisted by actual brain damage, but most twists are caused by a far simpler, and more basic thing--a false idea.
Take this one; A lot of people hold that if you are happy, it means you’re not being ethical, but are yielding to your own pleasure drives. This makes ‘being unhappy’ equal to ‘being ethical.’ Such a twist makes a man impose unhappiness on himself, and that inevitably include his wife and children, his employees and his friends. He will make them unhappy for the good of their souls, so they too, can have the satisfaction of being ethical.//74//
Now ther’s nothing wrong with his _brain_ his only trouble is that he has the false postulate that it is essential tp be unhappy. Many people judge the state of their ethics, and how well they are following them, by how unhappy they are making themselves. This type is the long-suffering-patient-man, type.
But there isn’t a thing wrong with his brain, and surgery is totally unnecessary. It is only necessary for him to find out what in God’s name ever gave him that cockeyed idea? It certainly isn’t sense, but he has never checked on himself deeply to see just how he does determine whether a thing is ethical or not. It’s apt to shock him when he finds out!
On problem solving:
There are two general motivations people display for solvig problems:
1. To keep from being hurt.
2. To achieve pleasure.
A human being who operates on the avoid-pain drive is not enjoying life adequately. Something’s bothering him severely, and he hasn’t located it.
The right answer is to enjoy problems, and solve them _for reward of satisfaction._
Both Peg and I had that aberration; I think nearly everyone in our civilization operates on the avoid-pain drive. To keep from starving. To avoid loss of my honor. To pay off the mortgage.
Too little ‘To see what’s beyond the hill. To find out why it works that way. To see if I can make the darned thing work. Just for the hell of it.’
It has made an enormous difference to us since we cracked that aberration. I _was_ doing the work involved in straightening out my mind in order to be able to handle life. To escape the feeling of incompetence and stupidity. I _am_ doing it because notheing I ever tackled before had anywhere near the zest, the high, fine sense of discovery and accomplishment that this has. It’s the damnedest adventure anyone ever tried--and it’s available as near as the nearest quiet room, where there is a fully sympathetic and understanding co-adventurer.
You might try looking and seeing if maybe someone hasn’t planted on you, very solidly, the idea that solving problems is a _you must or else_ proposiiton.
In any case, I can assure you--it’s a damned lie. You don’t have to solve problems--but there’s no satisfaction like that that comes from a nicely cracked prpblem, as the pieces go trickling down into the appropriate mental files.
Regards, John.
