[From Bill Powers (941207.0730 MST]
Hi, Fred --
Sorry about long delay -- I kept putting off writing because I wasn't
sure what to say about the proposal for a Center for the Study of Living
Control Systems.
I was wondering what had happened to the proposal, and not only on your
side. Since I sent those contributions for the proposal there's been
hardly a peep from anyone -- no suggestions, criticisms, or enquiries,
despite some direct contacts from me asking for committments.
The only conclusion I can draw is that there isn't much enthusiasm for
starting up a Center. This has made me look at my own real feelings
about it, and I realize that I have been rather dreading the thought of
going back to work, which is what it would amount to for me. I ran two
careers in parallel for 40 years, but I just don't have the gumption I
once had. Starting a Center is a young man's job.
The idea of the Center is great, but it's probably premature. PCT has
not reached a degree of acceptance such that the scientific and academic
community would see the Center as legitimate. Whatever we may think
about the attitudes of today's conventional scientists, colleges and
universities are still the intellectual centers everywhere in the world.
Without that whole community there's no infrastructure, no large-scale
access to students, no contacts with the power structure, no influence
on intellectual or educational leaders, no continuity with history.
I don't want to see the PCT movement develop at the level of Glasser's
Institute for Reality Therapy. However big that empire, it's still
basically an amateur operation cut off from the rest of the world except
through fringe contacts. No, I don't mean "amateur," what's the word I'm
looking for? It's less like a university and more like the Nairopa
Institute or the Ayn Rand Institute -- a private enterprise not subject
to the discipline and challenges of the academic world in general, and
far too limited by the whims, prejudices, and beliefs of a few people.
God knows I've become fed up with academia and establishment science,
but that's the real world in which human knowledge is advanced, however
slowly and imperfectly. It is, truly, the mainstream of human thought
even though it contains a lot of backwaters and eddies going the wrong
way. We have to look at the other side of the story: what the
mainstreams of science _have_ accomplished. When there is a consensus on
a good idea, amazing things happen. If we want to contribute to the
future of the human race, we simply have to keep working toward a
consensus. Splitting away and starting our own little universe will have
just the opposite effect.
I'm especially leery about starting up a separate universe when the very
concept of science is being rejected by people in such large numbers.
There seems to be an almost deliberate return to ignorance going on in
this country. Enormous numbers of people seem to have lost their
skepticism. There seems to be a movement back toward superstition,
magic, and fairy tales, a yearning to return to an imagined past that
never did exist.
I don't know; I sound to myself like a crotchety old man. But right now
I think that the time to start the Center is when events in the world of
science demand it. Despite what I said in the writings for the proposal,
we have not quite yet been overwhelmed by people clamoring to know more.
Maybe we just have to wait for that to happen; maybe then there will be
people in the PCT movement who can see enough of a future in it to risk
making a committment. In the meantime, we're not doing too badly.
Best,
Bill P.
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To: Fred Good
CC: CSG-L