Mr. Samuel Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Sam:
I was very surprised indeed to learn that you have cracked the hippy metalanguage code. Now perhaps for the first time it will be used for constructive purposes. Congratulations! My old hippy friends have an excess of missionary zeal—every time my head is turned they try to spike the coffee with LSD. To my knowledge they have never been successful, but I refuse to get lost with the question of how I know whether or not I’m turned on. One would think hippies would be preoccupied with such nonsense.
Sam, I very much appreciate your generous gesture in standing me to membership in the AAAS. And I plan to demonstrate my appreciation in a very concrete way: By reading and giving some thought to their publication.
Come by soon and let’s have some tea and cookies & talk.
Cordially,
Russell Joyner
United States Hydrocarbon Company
July 20, 1966
11:30 A.M.
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco, California
Dear Mr. Lewis:
I have just returned from a most refreshing visit with Dr. S.I. Hayakawa and others of the International Society for General Semantics.
It was brought to my attention that you are also interested in Semantics.
My itinerary reflects that I will be lecturing in California sometime in October. With hopes that our schedules coincide, I should like to meet you.
But, before we can be together in October, I invite you to correspond in the areas of communications you personally favor.
Kindest regards,
Sincerely,
U.S. Hydrocarbon Company
Alan J. Greenbaum
Postcard from S. I Hayakawa
Box 100
Mill Valley CA 94941
Nov. 5 1966
Dear Sam,
Thank you for copies of your letters to Reiser & “Guru.” I have read them with interest, but with little comprehension, since I know nothing about Buddhism or the Upanishads or any of the other things you mention. My own position is anti-religious and anti-mystical, so that I am no doubt beyond redemption. Alas.
Best wishes,
Don Hayakawa
A Review of “Language in Thought and Action”
by S. I. Hayakawa
by Samuel L. Lewis
9/5/1967
This is not a “book review.” It is not even a review but a proposed adaptation of some points of view which may be gained by studying the Mathematical Philosophy of Bertrand Russell and more especially Cassius Keyser. One regrets that the semantic movements have failed to take into account either the friendship between Alfred Korzybski and Cassius Keyser, or the outlooks presented in the basic works on Mathematical Philosophy to relate them to the new Language-Arts or to modern linguistics. There may be some suggestions here which could prove fruitful fields for research, or papers, but even that is not the purpose of this article.
Lord Snow has presented his “two cultures” which may be roughly referred to as “scientific” and “literary-humanist,” but only roughly. The term “science” is generally defined pragmatically rather than rigorously and here one presents the Russell-Keyser view that Science deals with categorical propositions and Mathematics with prepositional functions.
No doubt a good deal of Russell and more of Keyser appears in Science and Sanity but on the whole these portions of the great work are by-passed or only superficially treated. The result is that many persons use the words “Science” and “Mathematics” without distinct definitions or referents. And also they seem unable to grasp the import or Russell’s “confusion of types.”
We can reword this also to indicate that Mathematics, along with Logistics, deals with measurers and matrices rather than what are usually called “realities.” We utilize measurers, matrices. etc., in order to comprehend things and phenomena.
The term “logistics” is used because too often Logic refers to the special system of Aristotle. Traditionally there are at least two other systems of Logic which have effected men’s minds but which Western scholars have overlooked, i.e. the Nyaya Logics of India and the Buddhist Logics, or logistics. Briefly speaking Nyaya is nearer pure Semantics for it differs from Aristotelian Logic in demanding a referent.
Buddhist Logics, especially that of Dignaga, holds that when syllogisms differ from human experience there is something wrong with the syllogism. This system would not have suffered by the discovery of Radio-activity, or the potential acceptance of Parapsychology, etc. (This is not to uphold Parapsychology, merely to indicate it would fall well within Buddhist Logistics, or could apply Buddhist Logics.
We thus find traditionally three systems of Logics corresponding with some analogies to the doctrines of Euclid, Labochevski and Riemann. Meta-mathematics began when it found mankind could not be limited by either a system of Logic or Geometry but would manipulate them to explain some experiences of mankind, that all the “space” and other experiences were not always explained by one of these doctrinal Geometries.
Actually East and West came closer with the presentation of Relativity for the Logic of Dignaga’s Buddhist presentations ended with a strong defense of Relativity rather than absolutism. And there is some question whether any system of traditional Logic or Mathematics alone could uphold Absolutism, but instead would fall within the errors pointed out by Russell’s “confusion of types.”
In other words each system of Mathematics and each system of Logic (until modern Polish systems were devised) could be used to explain phenomena and/or thought. Thus the conclusion is that both Logic and Mathematics, dealing with prepositional functions, have a definite place in human culture, coordinate but different from what is known as “Science.”
The suggestion here is that “Language In Thought and Action” belongs in this field, a field itself perhaps not thoroughly studied. Therefore any analytical or “book review” of Hayakawa’s work could be self-defeating. We cannot expose Euclid though we can criticize his theory of parallels. Yet Euclid was long used.
Surveying has resulted in quite different pragmatic parallels from E-geometric parallels; parallels of Longitude meet, parallels of Latitude do not meet. Therefore there must be some adjustment either as Einstein did in his work on relativity and use of Minkowski, or as Hayakawa has done there.
In other words, the test of “Language in Thought and Action” must come in application and its success of failure in the solution of problems. But it is proposed here that if there are any short-comings in “Language in Thought and Action” these can only be corrected by further work in the same or related fields.
The first physicists no doubt used balances and foot-rules. The vernier, the caliper, the slide-rule, the pump, etc. came along later. The use of complicated instruments did not invalidate the simpler ones; they helped to perfect the science and art of measurement. Therefore if there are any short-comings in the views of Dr. Hayakawa as to “prepositional functions,” etc. which are the subject of this work, they would be uncovered or discovered later. This is what one hopes.
Published by the International Society for General Semantics
ETC.
A Review of General Semantics
Dear Sam Lewis:
Why not try a rewrite in the light of my marking-up of your paper here. Perhaps we can make something out of it, suitable for ETC., if we work in stages.
Why not try writing in first person—I, me, my, etc.
You might put some of your points in parenthesis where they are awkward in the body of your writing (only roughly).
I’m not sure what you mean in your comment about pragmatic vs. rigorous definition of science. Perhaps also you could make your points on Russell’s theory of types in parenthesis, e.g. (much could be learned, I think, by reconsidering Russell’s theory of types in this….) That is, either do something explicitly with Russell’s “types” or stop mentioning it, except in a passing way….
You could say a little more about Eastern logic systems than you do….
I feel you’re on something in your article. I have a few intimations about what this is. But it’s far from clear. Let’s make another stab at it, Sam. And again, and again, if it seems promising.
Sincerely, etc.
John Keel
ETC.
Box 100
Mill Valley, Cal.
S. I. Hayakawa
Sept. 26, 1967
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 precita Ave
San Francisco
Dear Sam,
You are always very kind to send me copies of your letters to others (such as Prof. Reiser) and also original long letters. I know I have been quite remiss about answering them—or even acknowledging them. But you must know the effect of your letters. They leave me without a thing to say in reply!
But since I always find your letters absorbing and fascinating, I hope you will continue to write and to send me copies when you write to others.
And incidentally, thanks for the help I know you have been giving to ISCS.
Sincerely,
Don
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, 94110
November 7, 1967
Mr. R. Joyner.
International Society for General Semantics
541 Powell St..
San Francisco. 94108
Lowgic
Dear Russ:
It is not possible to turn out a Science every day and what is more a science which concerns itself with non-scientists. For ever since the appearance of Science and Sanity there has been a rush pell-mell to get on the science wagons. But Science requires disciplines and this has given the Sanity-ists no chance to express themselves. Lowgic is the science by which the Sanity-ists can speak and I can only give an outline here. After that I may go into my anti-laboratory and do some further research.
Sanity-ists, unlike Scientists who unite men, divide them. Roughly speaking men are divided into Equal, More Equal and Super and the Supers always use Lowgic, the more Equal occasionally and have to be corrected; and the rest of the world consists of Hearers, who are audience. We have to have audience. If we did not have audience the Supers and the More Equal would not be permitted to function.
Scientists need education and discipline. Supers or Sanity-ists need prestige. Prestige may be obtained from military colleagues or no education is needed. Unlike Topsie, Supers are born like Pallas-Athena or Minerva, whole, fully equipped and ready and raring to go.
In this first report I can only give an outline. Sanity-ists for example can tell us “How to Fight a War.” They don’t tell us how to win it, but how to fight it. They all crib from “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court” written by a man who graduated from the More Equal people which includes the entire Fourth Estate. They can tell how to fight, but they can’t tell how to win. Anybody that does not agree is guilty of Free Speech and in Free Speech audience may talk back to the More Equal and Supers and this is questionable. For now they can be guilty of treason without any need to declare war.
Among the discoveries of Supers has been the fact of Parthenogenesis among the enemy. There is no question that we can build better highways, bridges culverts, aqueducts, etc. These are among the reasons for our being in Vietnam. But the enemy has the secret of parthenogenesis. No matter how many times we destroy them, they are ready within a couple of weeks to be destroyed again and they are. It is like stage rehearsal, but again this all in the Script, “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court.”
The Supers are always able to count the enemy dead. Unlike the More Equal who can count the enemy alive—which is rather rude, they count the enemy dead. Win, lose or indecisive, they can tell exactly how many enemy-corpses there are. We don’t have to win—we can retreat or we can lose but we know exactly how many of the enemy are on the ground as corpses and sometimes we can tell exactly how many have been carted away to hospitals. Indeed this is such an exact Sanity-stat, one wonders why we did not know it during World II or when Braddock got defeated, was it in 1755.
Another difficulty is that while we are lead by Supers, the other side is lead by More Equals. If we want Peace we invited the More Equals. We never invite the Audience. The Hearers. It is rather difficult. More of the Vietnamese are peasants, more are audience, most don’t want to fight and most do not believe in gadgets, miniskirts, Las Vegas morality, “excitement,” and electricity in their homes, tractors and everywhere. Here the Supers are even willing to agree with the More Equal, including Mao, but never Ho Chi Minh. We simply gotta give these things to the Hearers, the Audience. Any other course is “unthinkable.”
As to the More Equals. They have communication. It is a modern discovery. All history is full of war and peace and sometimes Viennas and Versailles. Viennas and Versailles are more entertaining than either war or peace but the Supers have abolished them and the More Equals want to restore them. If Senator Fulbright, who knows everything, wishes to negotiate, he is a traitor, a villain and a misleader: but if Dickie Nixon wishes to go to Moscow or Peiping or Tirana this is in the name of humanity and we all ought to laud his efforts.
The trouble arises. The More Equal, excluded by the Supers, have conferences on communication. These are put on by TV station KQED; they are not open forums. The Audience is excluded. This makes the Audience happy for soon the More Equal are at each other’s throats discussing how to end hostilities. Charley Chaplin cannot retire; we don’t have to pay for this talent.
But as the More Equal have the tendency to become too severe the Limelight is thrown by the Super Drew Pearson against the more equal Ronald Reagan. RR does not realize the existence of the Supers. Dickie Trickie discovered this when he was beaten running for President that tricks don’t work on Supers only on Audience and More Equals. He is still a More equal and wants to be a Super. So now we have Drew Pearson and Ronal Reagan and as you have said. “Don’t let facts spoil the issues.” In Lowgic this never happens.
End of first draft of this new and marvelous Super-science.
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif.
June 26, 1968
Dr. S.I. Hayakawa.
Box 100,
Mill Valley, Calif.
My dear Don:
I am in the most ticklish position, but you, not I, are on the hook.
I once was ready to write a paper on “The Semantics of
‘Space’” and may have the notes in my diary. But in reading “The Semantics of ‘Space’” in the June 1966 issue of ETC. I found we are not communicating at all. A five-letter word is used and there the resemblance ends.
The changes taking place in the private life instigate the idea of writing a paper on “The General Semantics of General Semantics,” which is on the agenda for the August meeting. But as written before, disciples of Cassius Keyser seem to have no place in the present I.S.G.S. movements and I shall continue in a vain hope—or maybe there is such a thing as human consideration—that the Keyserian points of view will be presented to a G.S. crowd before being summarily dismissed.
My paper on “Space” was the result of looking at three books all purporting to be on “Outer Space” (Whatever that is.) Two written by Americans, one by a Russian, found in the library of the National Research Center in Cairo, UAR. Of course Sam Lewis has never had any difficulty in getting to top levels among the presumptuous laboratory-scientists, or maybe he is the presumptuous one, but somehow or other we could discourse with what used to be called “communication.” No trouble whatever.
However in considering this word “Space” I also had in mind drawing methods and theories taught by various teachers with both Euclidean and non-Euclidean doctrines. And also the “space” doctrines of Anne Halprin, Martha Graham and my “fairy-God-mother,” Miss Ruth St. Denis. They all ought to fit in somewhere within the Korzybskian matrices—but hardly in the sub-Euclidean matrices of the day (want to bet?) G.S. seems to have accepted entirely and without comment the sub-Euclidean amphitheatric “space” accepted by this culture. And any effort to bring the Keyserian interpretations into A.K.’s teachings seem to have fallen far afield.
In the same issue Paul V. Johnson states that he “finds Korzybski’s Manhood of Humanity more profound and meaningful to me.” As Keyser himself recommended to this person the reading of Manhood of Humanity long before most of your colleagues and yourself were even aware of A.K.‘s existence this is something. And I must say and am telling others now, that so long as General Semantics is associated with the “to me,” and the “to me” depends upon whom the “me” is where are we?
Instead of being permitted to introduce a Keyserian interpretation of G.S. I was attacked personally by a group of presumably devotees of G.S. And why was I attacked? Because of efforts on my part to reconcile our mutual differences, and forget the personality and work for a cause. But your associate, John Keel, without investigating what was going on, joined the majority, and there Sam Lewis was left far afield trying to defend Prof. Hayakawa amid a lot of foes and John Keel joins in the attack. And this was “General Semantics 1967” and there is no way out, unless … and I left that to you.
I am therefore sending a copy of this to Alan Watts because in the cause of honesty, objectivity and what is called “science” by scientists (I am a member of the AAAS, and these people have let me speak at their conventions, tra-la-la).
Lloyd Morain has highly praised Oliver Reiser’s works and evidently at the moment—and I mean it, General Semantics is that cult that when Oliver Reiser says are Psi experiences he is right and when Alan Watts says the same thing, he is wrong.
This is an application of the “referent” and “reference” for the above “to me.”
I beg you to reconsider you stand. For as matters are, there is the possibility of the financing of an entirely different school which will study Science and Sanity along with the fine print and the mathematical sections and if so, we are going to have a “neo-semantic movement” not based on “to me,” but on the study of human behavior universally as in the “pure” sciences.
Alan Watts says, “All that you say about having vivid awareness of the world without psychedelics is true enough….” I always thought that General Semantics held that “words are not things.” Where is the evidence of the “vivid awareness of the world”—what world?
This is a tough beginning for a paper on “The General Semantics of G.S. 1968” but as this person has found the answers to a number of scientific problems in A.K.” and Keyser’s work, and as these answers have previously been rejected or ejected by your colleagues and yourself what is the answer to this dilemma. I cannot even defend you. What? And have John Keel attack me and you then defend him? I had better criticize you directly and let others know. What is “General Semantics?”
And in closing I list some of the problems I have tried to present with G.S. “solutions”:
Mendel-Lyensko dispute Vietnam
“Silent Spring” What is “Zen”
Collaboration with Dr. Chandrasekhar
Solution of problems by “Integration”
“The farmer and the cow-hand should be friends.”
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif.
June 26, 1968
Mr. Russell Joyner.
c/o I.S.G.S.
540 Powell St.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94108
Dear Russ:
Without any ill feelings I am getting real tough. The key to the letter enclosed is the very last note, “the farmer and the cowhand should be friends.”
The great dreams that Luther Whiteman and I had for Science and Sanity have long since been shattered and the world is full of a number of problems which I personally think could be causally solved, or dissolved if principles and matrices found in Korzybski’s works were put into operation. But operation seems to be that last item on the G.S. calendar.
The first steps have already been taken of sending a few books abroad and more have been asked for. There is a strong possibility either of outside financial help, or being summoned by wealthy people who were interested in solving some of the problems of confusion of the day. There is a tremendous gap between Sam Lewis being called down at the AAAS meeting for being silent, and criticized by a John Keel while presumably defending Don Hayakawa and Dr. A. Kaplan. There was neither “science” nor “sanity” and if G.S. is to be the society for the obliteration of “science” and “sanity” it should come out boldly for this. I dissent. I have dissented before against whole organizations to see them go into oblivion, and unlike the “General Semanticists” I can give facts, referents and references.
Indeed when I submit the paper on “The General Semantics of G.S. 1968” I shall quote from A.K. himself, point after point which would be in sharp disagreement with both policies and articles in ETC. I am not doing this on any personal level, but one has not only long passed the point where he gets excoriated for dissent, but is now being so accepted that empty words may be applauded, a very dangerous situation, but a very true one at the moment.
The young have found the shams, the pretenses, the power-complexes of their elders. I placed all of Keyser’s works in the library at San Francisco State hopping that G.S. Students could and would read them. I may have to purchase more.
If the world had produced any sane psycho-logics or logistics that could be used to “solve” present day confusion, it could be different.
In my private life I have just been successful in a forty-two year effort, to try to prove that I had certain interviews with a certain person on some very important matters concerning bringing East and West together, not the symbolic “East” and “West” of some narrow agreement between Alan Watts and Don Hayakawa called “vivid awareness of the world” but some actualities including geographical and demographic “time” and “space.”
The young are coming to my lectures and—in greater numbers every week and efforts in real, Rand-McNally Asia also expand. On ne passe pas.
Sure, more books will be purchased but scientists are based on some sort of humanism, not on agreements between friends.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Ca. 94110
Nov. 29, 1968
Mr. R. Joyner
I. S. G. S.
540 Powell St.,
San Francisco, Ca.
My dear Russ:
This letter is being written from Novato where I live part time and where I am resting, a much needed rest.
The recent part of my life is a “dismal failure” because in the efforts to play the role of Pied Piper, I have reached only the young, every week more and more. At the upper age limits of these young are those who have received the “liberty, democracy, humanity” verbal treatments and are tired of it.
The time has come when your associate and principal, Dr. S. I. Hayakawa must get out of his sacred ivory towered “realism” and face reality. Whether he can do it or not depends on how much there is in him. We expect words, a plethora of words, words, words and We shall be the first to recognize if he has anything in him besides the vocabularies which he pretends to despise.
Watching the history of Vietnam where my closest associate long lived and watching the events on the campus at Berkeley a few years back, one is forced to confirm at every step that Facts Must Not Confuse Issues. So far they do not, nor do eye-witnesses count. A drama is written and only the leading actors may play a part. It is not true that “all the world’s a stage,” only Us must play roles but it is difficult to determine who We are, compounded by the fact that very, very unsemantic usages are made of words and personalities and I find your chief colleagues indulging in the very programs which they, if they really believed in Korzybskian philosophy, would have shunned at all costs. But limelight is limelight and words must displace realities. That is the Game.
The other day I met a man who told me exactly what was going to happen at S. F. State. There was no evidence that he was an enrolled student. But within 48 hours he was televised, programmed, interviewed, etc., etc. He knew exactly what to do. He is important; the mass of students who wish to learn are not important.
The big break between your esteemed colleagues and this putative Pied Piper is that I accept Lord Snow and they do not. Scientists want facts; non-scientists are interested in personalities qua re persona grata. To be important is what counts, and otherwise nothing counts. And if you are an eye-witness on the wrong side you are a fink and will be shouted down. This is “liberty-democracy-humanity” at work.
I find most students are on campus to study and a minority for sex or love or sex-love. I consider this natural but evidently the noise-makers do not. Roughly speaking I find students enrolled in the Sciences, Arts and Humanities which includes the so-called Social Scientists. Only the latter count.
Not only do only the Humanities-Social Scientist students count but a non-enrollee, or a part-time student in the Humanities ranks far, far above a full time student, graduate or even instructor in the arts and sciences. It is they who cause the turmoil, it is they who are interviewed, it is they to whom the press, radio, TV, and magazines go.
I am not saying the protestants are wrong. I have either been one or allied with several in times past. But now there is no cause, just “I-Me” taking over the vocabulary. In Count Korzybski’s words which unfortunately your colleagues do not accept, even despise, Infantiloids, especially demonstrative Infantiloids rank far, far above Cortex users and this is ultimately going to destroy the present so-called “Semantic” movement.
I have been through too much in life to warn or advise. I know the patterns of the so-called “Leftists.” I see now a repetition of a form of Naziism which the so-called “leftists” join and if it were possible for Blacks to take over as the Nazis did in Germany, “whitey” would be the first to suffer, especially the “leftists.” Words Are Things Because Your Associates Prove That in Their Lives and Actions—most unfortunately. They make them things and they are not representatives of the “pure” sciences.
These words will reach Don’s most severe critics at a time when he needs friends. As he judges by personalities and not by any system of Logic, Aristotelian or non-A, he will have to come to grips with himself and now in a public dramatic way.
There are no issues. For a long time the University of California Extension had it that 15 people who paid, and sometimes did not have to pay much for a course got it. I do not know whether S. F. State has such a policy. But you cannot expect the Black Militants, the “Third World” handful, the press, the radio, the “excitement-mongers” to examine any hard facts which would disturb the issues (your own words).
I have enrolled in two courses in African Anthropology, no Negroes in the class. One in African Archaeology, exactly one Negro in the class. What is Swahili? Do you know the “Esperanto” of Central Africa? I am not going to push forward my very unwelcome (to your colleagues) knowledge.
Today “solutions” means, who has suggested them. We, and even you I.S.G.S. people, are far, far away from Cassius Keyser’s “Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking.” Korzybski quoted Keyser at every step but the future is going to look askance at egotists who are scared, and I say they are scared of a real disciple of the real Cassius Keyser, friend and mentor of your A.K.
This is evident from the groveling acceptance of Oliver Reiser and the equal disregard for his actual philosophy and teachings. Real Integration started in Mathematics and in the “Fluxions” of Leibniz—which are ignored. But the principles of Integration gradually infiltrated into other arenas.
We have the essence of them in our own Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We sent crusaders into the South to work for racial integration and now we have “crusaders” who wish to divide and divide and divide. A few years back “Blacks” were insisting there was only one race—the Human Race. From the standpoint of Integration that was true whether biologically “true” or not. But as your colleagues join with their opposites in that “a word means exactly what I mean it to mean, just that and nothing more,” there can be only confusion and there will be only confusion until General Semantics jumps out of theology and joins the ranks of Science.
Of course I am in agreement with Oliver Reiser. But I am doing something. All the praise for Julie Medlock, his close friend, but when it comes to real action, where does Julie have to go? And the young are finding out the difference between verbal expressions and heart-participation.
It is easy to propose constructive measures but as one is not in the script—in a so-called “democracy” one keeps quiet. Universities have student bodies and elect officials and they are almost always ignored when a fracas takes place. This is our “liberty-humanity-democracy” climax. (I use the word “climax” in the biological-scientific sense)—I do not expect non-scientists to understand this at all.
The letter remains incomplete. I shall consult with my young associates. The Pied Piper does not despise the young. He even listens to them.
Wishing you the same,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
December 23, 1968
Stewart W. Holmes.
English Department.
Castleton State College, Vermont
Dear Mr. Holmes:
I have read with interest the published articles by Mr. Henry I. Christ and your good self which place side by side the “irony” etc. with very exact context: with something called “Zen” of quite different context.
Unfortunately I was a student of the late Cassius Keyser of Columbia University, friend and mentor of the late Alfred Korzybski. It was Keyser who introduced me to Korzybski and recommended him and it was Keyser with whom I have talked as man-to-man, something absolutely forbidden by the later persons who now have control of ETC. They have refused absolutely and adamantly to accept this hard fact in the life of a man eligible to contribute financially but not otherwise eligible.
I have read Science and Sanity through many times, including portions which have seldom or never been read by some of those who play leading roles in the semantic movement. Not only that I had read the majority of books referred to by A.K. when Science and Sanity appeared and had long before that read The Manhood of Humanity.
At that time I was a student in Zen under what used to be called “Zen Teachers,” all of whom were Orientals. I even now have a number of unpublished manuscripts of these worthies. But that “Zen” has little to do with the type of “Zen” accepted by ETC. which is the childbrain—and I think a very good childbrain, of a number of noted Englishmen. I have nothing to say about these Englishman but when a clique is permitted to deliberately go contrary to the teachings of Science and Sanity and make identities, and make words into things, so that objective Zen from Chinese and Japanese sources is not only equalized but identified with dialectics called “Zen” coming from those mostly of Western origins who did not study under recognized Zen masters, we are at an impasse.
In 1923 I introduced Nyogen Senzaki to the Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan and they immediately came together in a mystical experience but also in their mutual acceptance of a non-Aristotelian system of Logic which ETC. has absolutely and adamantly refused to consider during the years. These non-Aristotelian philosophies and logistics dominated a large portion of humanity including the forebears of the present controller of ETC.
Before even daring to write of Zen, I had not only had the Zen-experience of Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese (can give referents, data, etc and no nonsense). Apparently it is quite different from another sort of “Zen-”experience which is dominant among those of Western birth. I am not decrying the Western experience, but it is quite contrary to the pseudo-identity practices condemned by Korzybski but permitted in ETC.
When Dr. Huston Smith was here and mentioned Phillip Kapleau I purposely almost upset the class by applauding out loud. There is no use to relate my experiences; this has been done very well by my fellow-American Phillip Kapleau. But Dr. Huston Smith who is privileged to write told me he failed in his Ko-an efforts and this person has not so failed—i.e. he has been recognized by Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese, but not particularly by Westerners, excepting the young who are in revolt.
Sure, I have a whole tome of material on my own Zen experiences and also on the Zen experiences related to me by others who had been monastically trained. These may or may not be published in my life-time. But I have no need to battle against dialecticians who hide behind other titles and do not accept objectivities and referents if they come from “the wrong people.” This last phrase is used by our English experts on their “Zen.”
When Master Thich Thien An came to this house—he only visited here when he was in San Francisco, he said, “I do not wish to offend anybody because there may be a future Buddha among you, and therefore in doubt I shall regard you all as Bodhisattvas.” This is the general behavior pattern of the real Zen Masters under whom I have studied.
All of them decry quoting ancient sages and Buddha himself definitely laid down a dictum against it.
This morning I reported to a real scholar of real Buddhism that as all efforts to introduce Lord Buddha’s first Jhana have been successful I now introduce the second Jhana. I believe the young want honesty, objectivity, direct experience and some of the moral teachings of Lord Buddha himself. Modern Western-Zen has abrogated these.
Dialecticians are unable to look through any Galilean telescope. Why don’t you try to come closer to living Zen masters. There are plenty of them and some can speak English quite well.
Faithfully.
Samuel L. Lewis
Venerable He-Kwang (Zen-shi)
cc-Christ
cc-Hayakawa
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
March 7, 1969
Mr. R. Joyner
My Dear Russ:
I hate very much to seem to go contrary to the present “love, not war” by having to write and also to enclose a copy of a letter to one of my several real friends with whom I have not been on good standing. It is no fun living in a social world where one group refuses adamantly and absolutely to accept any intellectual contribution and the other group shuns one who has any form of association with the general semantic movement however defined and however functioning.
I think it is highly dangerous to see as administrator of an important intellectual institution a man who should be properly classified as an anti- intellectual. I have seen few publications in recent times as anti-scientific as ETC.
I shall no doubt have to purchase again all the books of the late Cassius Keyser and re-present his marvelous teachings. Fortunately I can do this today in collaboration and cooperation with Cosmic Humanism on the one hand and quite a few new organizations and publications of the young on the other. The young may be derided, but the young are. Some of them are liable according to the law of probabilities to remain on earth a little while longer than some of the rest of us. I am expecting to meet socially soon various Messiahs and high-priests of other movements all of whom have in common the use of s.r. terms. I think some of them are quite equal to emulate your associates in this, but they are against your associates.
It is all very well to proclaim one’s adherence to sound intellectual thinking. This stand can hardly be supported by equal adherence to proficiency in s.r’s. I am constantly re-reading the conclusions of Science and Sanity almost as if they were a Bible. I am no longer going to appeal. The world is going to find out. The doors are open for me—elsewhere.
One of my greatest sins next to having been introduced to Korzybski by Cassius Keyser was to have known Lloyd when he was a boy. Your colleagues say that God may forgive us our sins, but our subconscious nervous system will not. I do know I have never been forgiven for these two sins and others like that by your colleagues. I am no longer a scapegoat or a stepping-stone and can hardly be blamed if I enter the public arena now as I well may. I have little use for some of those in revolt, but I’ve never had the slightest chance, not the slightest, from those who wish to be in authority.
You and everybody else will be welcome at the affairs referred to in the carbon attached.
Ersatz love,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco 94110
March 11, 1969
Mr. R. Joyner
I.S.G.S.
540 Powell Street
San Francisco, Calif. 94108
My dear Russ:
This g-n-a-t is so busy he can hardly find time to leave this house excepting on emergency errands. You may wonder under these circumstances why so much time and attention is given to quarrels in which he is not directly involved.
Last night one told an audience (all young people of course) that when Science and Sanity appeared, he thought it might be possible to solve many of the world’s greatest problems. Instead most of the problems of the year 1933 remain and a lot more have accumulated. And instead of the principles carefully explained in Science and Sanity being applied to problems great and small, it has developed, as Dr. Anatole Rapport has pointed out, that a small group has taken hold of the general semantics movements. These people seem quite incapable of indulging in what Cassius Keyser called “rigorous thinking.”
I am not going into this more here, but instead I am enclosing copy of Logical and Scientific Method in Early Buddhist Texts, by G.S.P. Misra. I have already discussed this subject matter with a number of leaders of the so-called Third World Front. I have not been particularly sympathetic with these people, but find on talking with them they are complaining about the American inability to accept Asian cultures. This is all the more marked when your principal, part Asian himself, has adamantly and absolutely refused to look into the cultures of his ancestors and kindred peoples.
No doubt this article will speak for itself. But equally true it is going to be published in part by the most severe critics of the present policy of “ETC” unless there is some way for “ETC” to get out of realism and into Reality.
I am still seeking time to come and pay more than my respects; time not money is my present need. Every day now, not only every month, shows increasing respect and response from both the young and instructors in several of the great intellectual institutions of this vicinity.
With kindest personal regards, I remain,
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave
San Francisco 94110
April 10, 1969
I.S.G.S.
509 Sansome Street
San Francisco 94111
Attention: R. Joyner
My dear Russ:
In one sense, maybe in more than one sense, I owe you a profound apology. In another sense, I am fighting, so to speak, for my life. When a person is brushed aside, when he offers solutions to problems, perhaps it does not matter; but when the problems remain, one may ask: what has been gained?
The outstanding example of this can be seen in the series of rebuffs to my now long deceased colleague and friend, the late Robert Clifton. He lived and worked in Vietnam. Despite this, he was either rejected or ejected from one end of this land to the other. And the continued persistence in our accepting the opinions of the important person who was not there or only occasionally has been there as against the direct experience of the unimportant person who was there stands as a black mark against our culture.
In this instance, we are spending untold millions and losing many lives. Instead of learning from this, even now the President of the United States is considering intervention in Biafra; and we are very timid about joining the big powers in effecting some kind of peace in the near east.
Every week this year the total attendance at my lectures has increased, and now also the collections are mounting. The young people, and more recently some not so young, are willing to listen to the little man who has been there. But since seeing you, lifelong efforts in the field of promoting real Asian-American cultural exchange have again been thwarted by another non-American non-Asian to head the project. I simply no more will stand by and be smothered. I am going to fight back.
This week there are some Gandhi celebrations. I have followed non-resistance patterns and have both been smothered and ignored in public, excepting at the meetings of the AAAS where I was bawled out for not speaking. Actually, we accept only partially Gandhi’s teaching. I have the misfortune to win an international competition concerning Gandhi given by Vincent Sheehan. It turned against me all the local people who thought they knew something about Gandhi and Indian literature. Socially, I have never recovered; but with the Indians themselves and those now in charge of the teachings of Asian culture on several campuses—especially those of the University of California—it is a different matter.
When Science and Sanity was published, Luther Whiteman and I thought we had the implements which might solve many problems.
I list among these problems: the Mendel-Lysenko controversy; the disputes over Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring; the very severe problems connected with saline soils; the semantics of the word “space,” etc. etc.
There has just been another revolution in Pakistan. This country was established as an ABCDE republic. ABCDE was verbalized as “Islamic.” After 15 years of independence, it was discovered there was no valid semantic definition of “Islamic.” ABCDE remained as a word, anglicized as “Islamic” but no referent. Too often persons become more important than referents. This I believe is the basis of both Korzybski in his time and Lord Snow now.
The “guru” of Field-Marshall Iyaub Khan has had many conversations with me, and he has put aside funds for a chair at the University of Islamabad wherein semantics or its equivalent could be taught. This “guru” at least solidly believes that the word “Islamic” should be semanticized. He has the money, the organization and the backing. Letters written at his request have been ignored—I don’t want to go into this anymore; we want to do, not gripe.
Before the end of next month, my God-daughter Miss Khawar Khan will be here; or I should say Professor Khawar Khan or even by that time Dr. Khawar Khan. I have already introduced her to both semantic literature and the writings of Oliver Reiser. I shall certainly be in a financial position to purchase anything you suggest. Pakistan and perhaps much or all of Asia needs some understanding of semantics as science and art and no longer as the speculative literature of individuals qua re their personalities.
Of course there is another outlook more important than griping, and that is in the real integrational approach, both as summarized in Oliver Reiser’s Projects Krishna and Prometheus, but most of all in his Cosmic Humanism.
Every day this week, I have had to face or must face something big. The difference is now I am either being sought or listened to. I fear beyond all things the establishment of a personality cult. Even if it is necessary to retrace many steps, I think we can really help solve real problems and many—if not all of them—through the general principles found in Science and Sanity and literature and philosophical and scientific achievements since 1933. I have.
I have most important interviews scheduled for both Friday and Saturday. Each of them has potentially world bearing. Sometimes one is like Emerson’s mouse-trap inventor. Fortunately, my health and the hard but simple fact I have irons in both horticulture and philosophy maintains a high level of health and energy—and even perhaps intellectual acumen. But Cosmic Humanism must not be limited to personality cult.
I shall definitely want copies of everything from Alfred Korzybski, Cassius Keyser and Oliver Reiser. Also perhaps from Charles Pierce and others whom I consider belong to American American philosophies. This would include Professors who have functioned especially in the large universities of the city of New York, several of them. I shall also be glad to buy any books you suggest.
No doubt I shall have to calm down more, nor become too ebullient over either the successful affairs of this week or the immediate appointments which follow in the next few days. I shall drop in as soon as possible.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
cc Fiske
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco 94110
April 10, 1969
R. Joyner
509 Sansome St.
San Francisco 94111
Dear Russ:
In re: Campus Disputes
I am compelled here to accept for the moment Lord Snow’s philosophy of two cultures. An assayer or petrologist would report in toto rock or lode analysis. The question of “minority and majority” would be of no particular importance. To begin with the laboratory report would have to come close to 100% totality. The chemical and economic evaluations might be totally unalike.
(In additional to any philosophical background, I have been active in both laboratory and field, in soil analysis, to the point where parts per billion could affect the economic end pathological interpretations. I am not going to try and convince people of this. Egos are egos.)
There is a custom if not a law in this land that if one political party is given time on the air, the other political party must be given equal time. We are constantly being faced with two-way Aristotelian choices. In my forthcoming paper on Pakistan, I shall write on the heritage of Manichaeism which has had a baneful effect both on parts of Asia and in the west entirely. Many of the objections to Aristotelianism are in both fact and effect objections to Manichaeism. All this good/bad, right/wrong, me/thee, proper/improper etc. has stemmed from the once wide-spread teachings of Mani.
Despite the efforts of Saint Augustine, dualistic teachings arising from Mani (and thus back to Aristotle) definitely penetrate the mass/mind. In looking at the campus disputes, nearly all published articles coming from Lord Snow’s literary humanist culture follow Mani’s dualism (and thus Aristotle). These people do not understand the assayer-petrologist’s views, that there are many ores, many minerals, even many gems in a rock. Diamonds cannot be found in sand because the sand is in the majority.
So it is that whenever campus outbreaks take place, spokesmen for both the Regents (the establishment) and for the protestants are given ample time on the air. In my writings on soil science I have called attention that few even know they are dealing in the world of Silicon. So it is in campus outbreaks: few consider that they are dealing with students and teachers and not with very small minorities, representing or misrepresenting power structures and pseudo-revolutions.
I have just heard that the University of Oregon may establish its own TV broadcasting station. 6 great universities around the city of Boston have their broadcasting stations, and I can assure you it is the most objective and information carrying institution in the whole country.
Therefore, I have suggested to Senator Moscone: that there might be a law that every time a TV station gives any time to a non-representative speaker concerning the affairs of any campus, equal time should be given also to an official of the student body and also to an official of one of the teachers’ or professors’ groups.
The terrible thing that has happened is that those in charge of communication—both the power structured people and the pseudo-revolutionaries— ignore the marvelous achievements of present day education. It is stupendous. I myself have a very good idea compared to most people of what is being done on the campuses of the multiversity of the University of California. But I also know Columbia, Chicago, Pennsylvania, and to a lesser extent, Pittsburgh, Texas A and M, Kansas State and other institutions in this country. This indeed is a very small section.
I have received recently a very nice letter from the alumni association of the University of California. But with all their defense of the present educational system, I am unconvinced that they actually know all the merits of even a single campus—they only feel it. However much I have griped in the past, or even the present, I avowedly believe that today we have the most wonderful people of the world, not only of the present but maybe of all times giving instruction and learning in “the halls of ivy.”
To sum up, we need a combination of the approaches of science and Oliver Reiser’s Cosmic Humanism. I mean actually and effectively. I hope this is clear.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
Feb. 28, 1970
Mr. Russ Joyner
449 Myra Way
San Francisco, Calif.
My dear Russ:
This has been a most busy day. Started in the morning my writing a diary letter to Oliver Reiser, then sundry letters, personal and philosophical, and then not the rains, but the mail came. Boy! I received so many letters today from young people in so many distant places. These are chiefly in response to my work in the dance or to articles which appeared in the now defunct The Oracle. There is no question in my mind that the young are different. They are not only different, they were predictably different. They are non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean, and integrative in outlooks. This should be self-explanatory.
My present peace program is simple: so long as audiences look upon the personality of speakers and judge by their emotional reactions—generally ending by passing resolutions—we are not going to have any peace. Also my “peace program” to learn to listen to others is no doubt too simple for dialecticians, but it has its advantages.
There is no rest for us guys. Mother Divine Vocha placed in my hands Some Neglected Factors in Evolution by one Henry M. Bernard. I found in it everything I want—that is everything that agrees with my conclusions about the biological world, a world so far from the “nature” of the dialecticians and existentialists there is no way to bridge the gap, nor is it necessary. The general philosophy in this book supports my own writings on social evolution and the establishment of the new form of commune.
love,
Sam
910 Railroad Ave.
Novato, Calif. 94947
March 12, 1970
Mr. R. Joyner
507 Sansome St.
San Francisco 94111
My dear Russ:
At the moment there is nothing like spare time, complicated by the fact that most of my very fine young followers feel I lose caste if I walk; while I feel I lose time seeking for parking places etc. in your vicinity. On rare occasions I am able to sneak away and carry on most necessary personal business and I do have most important personal business in your vicinity.
The lady whom I call mother Divine had placed in my hands “Korzybski’s Concept of Man” which was a lecture of Cassius Keyser in the year of our … 1922, and which was published by the institute of General Semantics in 1946.
I was not aware of the Institute in that year, but I am quite aware of the original lecture and I had naively assumed that a logic and logistics based on this lecture would be welcomed by the ISGS which has not been the case. But I have no intention of going into forensics or logistics at this time. I am developing my own personal philosophy which for want of a better term I am calling Bragmatics, or maybe that is the best term. My youthful audience listen with glee to stories of accomplishments and also stories of a priori rejections by many important persons and groups, solidly wedded to words, words like liberty, democracy, humanity, etc. etc. But now the fat is in the fire so to speak.
I am all prepared to attend an international peace conference where they permit the unworthy as well as the worthy to state their views. Someone has discovered that you can’t establish peace by crushing and squelching. I realize this is not a very popular view and it is often quite in order to prevent the unqualified from interfering in discussions which purport to solve some problems. But while this has been going on some people have had the nerve to assume that even the most unworthy may have a rationale, and that they cannot always be stopped from presenting their case even if they are entirely wrong. That is to say, they are permitted the floor; they are permitted to state a plausible point of view and their egos are not attacked for daring to express and opinion.
The combination of a situation of accomplishment on one hand and rejections on the other hand by what have been called establishments is now making me both a folk hero and a personal hero to an ever growing number of young people. Three different persons or groups so to speak independently felt my work should be televised. It is now being televised, though when where and how it may be shown is beyond my present picture, because I am concentrating on attending a world peace conference, a conference where the floor is open, and where referents are required from the worthy and unworthy, and the passing of great names coupled with emotional chairmen will not avail. Anyhow, the directors of the pilot efforts have actually demanded I express in full both my experiences and opinion, and these may be publicized sooner or later.
I am not forgetting here Keyser’s lecture on Korzybski. I can overlook here that all efforts on my part to get this knowledge better known in this region have been brushed aside in the past, but that past is passing, and sooner or later armed with the great American virtue ze-dollar I believe we can establish forms of communication that will communicate and not just please certain types of personalities who operate as if name calling, proper name calling of course, held the key to solution for everything.
I find after many years that my basic logistics has not changed; that I still am operating under the principles and promises of Keyser’s philosophy; and today, people are listening to me, chiefly the young and university professors. This for me is sufficient. But my point of view is of no value unless it is properly pragmatized.
The public exhibition last night under camera klieg lights and sound equipment did not touch my ego so much as the breakfast I made for Mother Divine Vocha Fiske this morning. Of course Vocha had a full view of rather successful efforts and also she having been connected with stage and screen and speech arts was better able to judge the worthiness or unworthiness of these efforts than most people. But now I am preparing to work even on a world scene and of at least being cautions enough to know peace is not obtained by mud-throwing on the part of anybody. I also feel that the day of lamentation over the rejection of Cassius Keyser’s points of view is over with considerable regret that the so-called scions of A.K. have failed to examine those basic teachings upon which so much of Science and Sanity was fundamented.
I am having this brochure of Keyser copied. I am going to use it. I am going to have it distributed to many of the leading philosophers of the area. After all these years I think it is still most wonderful, and I am hoping, in fact I know, that the young people of today will easily pass through real differentiation, partial differentiation, and other sound principles of mathematics and logic to seeing how such principles can be incorporated into higher and perhaps less than higher education, and into the thinking of the day.
I am finding many of the scientists of the day writing splendid articles on philosophy and psycho-logistical research. Their methods, their schemata, and their conclusions are often far from the methods, schemata, and conclusions of parlor scientists. I have always differed from Julian Huxley, the saint-pope of those who do not believe in saints and popes, who wrote Religion Without Revelation. I believe in exactly the opposite point of view: revelation without religion. This has been enough to exclude me without any question from audiences dominated by those who admire the saint pope as above, but now bringing me into contact with much larger audiences of refreshing young people and frustrated university professors. As I am leaving for an actual world conference, I should at least be able to express whatever might be expressed without any name calling or word throwing. How many of the problems of the day are actual problems and not verbal ones may be difficult to determine. It would seem that every sociologist knows more of problems which we should imagine could be handled by laboratory scientists and so we are faced with a most curious situation. According to the customs and laws of this land no one presumes to say anything about the diseases of the flesh of human kind, but “everyone” is allowed to discuss endlessly diseases and problems of the bodies of plants. I am unable to understand this. It is even worse, because I have studied the plant sciences. I have even cured sick plants, and this alone cars me from respectable discussions on Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring.
The so-called open forums on “Silent Spring” gave all the doctors lawyers “Indian chiefs,” law-enforcing officers, psychiatrists—indeed everybody but gardeners and etymologists—the right to dispute endlessly on subjects for which they had no backgrounds. That was only the beginning. How we have “pollution,” “drug,” “ecology,” etc. etc. in which social prestige or a university degree on any subject whatsoever gives one full right to say anything at all; while the pragmatism of those actually engaged or involved in these problems is of no avail.
You see Russ, I am now in an excellent position to speak or roar whether it be on the Judeo-Christian Bible or the literary efforts of Count Alfred Korzybski or the historical existence of Wm. James and not only the young but more and more professors of actual philosophy will listen, so I am about to leave this area in great hopes not of success abroad, but of ability to have a communication system which communicates and does not resound only to the public or implied praise of those who write articles on the subjects. One of the greatest achievements or rather pseudo-achievements of this present age has been the ability to have articles accepted labeled communication which actually do not communicate anything.
The other night when the reports came in about Laos I had a friend in the house who had lived in Laos etc. etc. I asked him shall we laugh cry or roar? Yes, he said, shall we laugh cry or roar? And it is tragically amusing to be informed of the non-arrival of the wounded of the surreptitious battlefields at the American Hospitals in Laos. While this is no doubt an extreme case, it is no doubt a typical case. So we are left not only with problems of pollution etc. but with the greater still problems of the words used in and by the press and by inference in public discussions. In all this it has been as you have declared, “facts must not disturb the issues.”
Now it is my opportunity, and your colleagues have given me absolute ample scope, to bring out in public the conclusions of A.K. in Science and Sanity and use these as bases for public and private utterances. And with emotional disturbances and value judgments, this leaves everything in my hands for accomplishing what I have been hoping to accomplish for many many years.
In conclusion I shall not indulge in value judgments in which your colleagues are so much more proficient than I am. I certainly do not believe, nor will I accept that value judgments can in any way promote the cause of peace in this world.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
April 2, 1970
Mr. R. Joyner
ISGS
507 Sansome Street
San Francisco, 94111
My Dear Russ:
Here I am at a “Summit” meeting. Summit meetings should of course be held in high mountains and this in a sense is no exception. Why, there is even a delegate here from the Dalai Lama. He hasn’t done anything yet, but this being a summit meeting he should be here as he is used to summit meetings.
Well Russ, it is not only prophets, it is even scamps who may be not without honor far from home. By being my small abnormal self, I am already facing tomorrow morning with a special private interview with a special news reporter to be followed with another interview with a “holy man” of India. There are a lot of “holy men” from India here, who will receive unusual consideration from all the Christians and atheists, but not from each other. Generally speaking, an important person is one who speaks at the drop of a hat, but a “holy man is just one who speaks, he has no hat to drop so he doesn’t bother, he just speaks.
This may turn out to be a peace conference. So far not a single delegate from the various “world peace groups” or “world union groups” or the “world federation groups” or the “world whorled groups.” They would have to face each other and that would be something. Indeed, there are not a few who believe peace might come through concessions to others, that peace is not going to come by jamming fixed programs down other people’s throats through bursts of applause. Really. A lot of people realize that we don’t get peace through jammed programs or through diplomats. There was exactly one diplomat who was introduced to the audience tonight and he never said a word. Almost inconceivable but true. Maybe this is a new age.
Of course I can’t tell what it all means—cameras and lights and prestige and conferences and nobody a priori rejecting me—this just isn’t done. Why, they don’t even reject. Of course this is something that has happened before. Now I am carrying my secretary with me so he can see for himself and he has become convinced. Even converted. Maybe peace is not entirely a dream after all. And there are some who believe we can have population control without using military weapons on others.
Or maybe alchemy consists in turning venom into honey.
Love,
Samuel L. Lewis
Geneva Swisse
April 3, 1970
My dear Russ:
This is Geneva, not San Francisco. We have just had a long session on population control and world peace. One listens attentively to big people and excellent orators, men of renown. But here, far away from home one is also permitted to speak and listen to with some attention and then told that what one says carries weight. Why Russ, even the photographers pay more attention to me—the beard of course, and that is one of the reasons I wear a beard. Sneaky no doubt, but why not. After years of having chairmen who are “experts” deny me the floor, and in a sense guarding the door against my entrance, I came in through the window or the furnace flues, but I do come in, and I can tell people with perfect honesty about my experiences and researches, and they are accepted.
It is remarkable how much the sociologists and religionists agree on handkerchief drooling and tear jerking. When it comes to thinking, they are often on different sides, they seem to agree that handkerchief drooling and tear jerking are very important in “solving problems.” By “solving problems” each means that everybody else should condescend to accept “my” views. Only, when you have 1511 different “my” views getting in each other’s way, even a simple shrimp like myself can sneak it over.
Well Russ, I did not get much applause, but the few young people said I talked sense, and even some of the older people gradually respected it, but Russ, I won the debate. I won it hands down. I won it hands down because the lady who is the organizer of this peace conference threw her arms around me and I had to hold my hands down.
I don’t know what is going to happen when I come back. By this time I am sure my picture has appeared in many of the European papers.
Why, even the Rabbi of Jerusalem has condescended to me, and a lot of people who may not like my ideas have to admit that I am more picturesque. I purposely make it that way. Among the elite, trickery of course is the best of arguments.
I am going to England soon to meet the hippies there and to meet the orientalists who are orientalists. I get along fine with the orientalists I meet here. I even get along fine with the Orientals. In fact when I look in the mirror I get along fine with myself, but not otherwise.
Everybody is crying about the young. I don’t know what they mean. I do know that the handkerchief drooling and tear jerking must go on. When you do this long enough, you don’t have to listen to any young person. You give a long speech about love and consideration and brotherhood—a long speech of course—and then you are too tired to listen to the young when they get the floor. So I call myself the devil of the conference. I listen to everybody during the meetings and I talk to everybody between the meetings. The “big people” talk to everybody during the meetings and keep quiet during the recesses. So you see that I am neither an expert nor a diplomat. I do not call my ideas and conceptions “facts.” I call my doings facts. Maybe I’d better come home and study some semantics, but this is better than a vaudeville show. Anyhow, I am on the verge of waiting for Pope Paul to come out for birth control and insist it was always a catholic dogma. And in the city of Geneva everybody blames Calvin, of course, why not?
Love,
Samuel L. Lewis
May 29, 1970
Mr. R. Joyner,
c/o I.S.G.S.
507 Sansome St.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94111
Dear Russ:
Yesterday I thought I had closed the books anent my departure for New Mexico, but after that first Vocha telephoned as an ambassador of good will and then very late came the news that some of my “non-existing” camp followers who seem to have acquired a considerable amount of American virtue ($$$$$) are planning to establish a publishing house beginning with one of my manuscripts. I have been totally unprepared.
True, I have been to a top peace conference in Switzerland and met some of the potential or real leaders of humanity, including some very un-British-like exponents of what used to be called “Zen.” They amazed me at the end by saying I looked, talked and acted like Walt Whitman, a conclusion anybody not a “Whitmanian” might accept. I am not, however, of the same sexual group as WW and I did not have the advantage (or disadvantage) of starting out as an editor with no publishing problems. Anyhow some of those big-wigs also are planning to publish other of my manuscripts.
In a certain sense I felt this was coming. My first name is that of the inventor of the electrical telegraph and in general my life resembles his remarkably. In the end he was successful just as honesty, integrity and factual knowledge, and especially factual knowledge must in the end be in control. And my droll, “Peasants must obey traffic laws” is not nonsense.
Our President now comes out for a “spiritual and moral revolution.” When Big-shot U Thant was here he did the same. Almost everybody joined in an ovation and I saw nothing but bloodshed. Who was right? For years I tried to get some peace society, some church, some anti-church group, some “universal brotherhood” to permit a Cambodian to speak. Well, after getting the brush off from the multitudinous “liberty, democracy, humanity and peasants, shut up,” people, you can guess how far I got. But when a local professor wanted to go to Rand-McNally’s Cambodia we got here a top introduction.
Now we have lots of problems. Luther Whiteman and I were wrong. We wrote enthusiastically about Science and Sanity and thought this was a measuring stick to help solve and even avert problems. How wrong we were! I love you and think Korzybski was tops, but so was Jesus Christ and you have unfortunately gone on record with the priestcraft. I don’t know what is to be done. Evidently we have to have the priestcraft. They may change their religions, but they have to direct the “traffic laws.”
I don’t feel good about it. I have been given a summer school. It is my first adventure in directing and organizing. The young people think I communicate; to their elders the very thought is anathema. But this is only the beginning. I am being beseeched by a number of young to encourage another approach to education and communication that communicates—not an empty sound “communication” which stands in the way of two-way traffic or complex-traffic between human beings.
When I was in London I was taken to a Japanese Zen Master. He suddenly became voluble. My friend said, “That was strange! He has never talked before. He is usually very quiet and while you were there he talked; why is that?” “Didn’t you know, I am Master Big-ears.” Now it is rather strange, in England they look to Japanese to explain Zen Buddhism and ETC. has looked to Englishmen! Of course this can be changed and I am hoping some day you will be open to having it changed. But that is on the books and don’t kid yourselves that the universities do not know that!
If I were to return toward the end of next month I should be at the conference of top scientists. They have invited me and they would probably extend the floor as they have in the past. (Rather odd, isn’t it?) But I want to go ahead with my projects and then work on Peace for the Near East. Just as I have always believed the Cambodians were human beings and not wild game, I have known of a number of outlooks and groups in the Near East which our “experts” and those in charge of communication (!?) ignore.
Of course the President has a program and it is re-echoed, “Kill them all, the Lord will know His own.” The only people I’ll accept as believing in peace are those who are willing to listen—and I mean listen with ears—to all sides. I read all of Science and Sanity. I studied mathematical philosophy before that. I may have to revisit Columbia U. again. I should prefer not. Besides the young are coming out to champion me. And if I ever read out the list of those “champions of humanity” who have a priori rejected—and I guess rejected a lot of people, there will be h… to pay.
I don’t want it that way. I believe Keyser and Korzybski and Reiser and now their successor who is in New Mexico have the keys to help solve the real problems, including “ecology” and “environment” and “pollution” and a lot of other things. I differ entirely from your colleagues about Lord Snow’s The Two Cultures. I should like to find some non-laboratory(?) “scientist” who is willing to listen and can reply without indulging in personalisms and personalities.
The door is open for me to establish a Korzybskian school and not call it “general semantics” or rather promote Oliver Reiser’s Project: Krishna and Project: Prometheus. I should have preferred doing it with you, for you, etc. (by which I mean etc. in the traditional, or rather outworn definition.)
Love,
Samuel L. Lewis
P.S. When I return I may plan some lectures on “Supersex.” That is enough to keep the oldsters away from my meetings. But I have seriously the problem of looking up halls. The few places used now are overcrowded—by the young, of course, not by the “Nixons” who so admire the young—in words.
San Cristobal, New Mexico
Sunday morning
Mr. R. Joyner
I.S.G.S
509 Sansome St.
San Francisco, Calif. 94111
My Dear Russ:
This is written high in the Rockies, many miles from a post office, and still further from villages. It had not been my intention to write at all, but events have been piling one upon another, and having time on my hands now, and perhaps not later, certain reports are being made.
1. The first is entirely negative. Before I became acquainted, I heard a terrific report against Don Hayakawa. I had assumed I was summoned here by a number of young people, to find that many were not so young, and ultimately, a large sector were university professors, including PhDs, and at least two professors of Philosophy from Harvard.
It seems that there is an underground against Don all over the country. The basis is not particularly noble, because the nucleus has been Black Power and Third Front people. But they did not have to do anything. Don has appeared before huge audiences, and made himself an exemplary of automacy, despotism, and intolerance. He has lost all his audience, and very serious scientists and instructors have turned against him all over the land. I doubt very much whether this can be communicated to him.
The reason for writing is that one can expect riots and even bloodshed. The foundations have been laid with the assumption that even he himself (Dr. Hayakawa) will ignite the flames…. In the end, he will not be defeated on either his virtues or faults, but because he is an atheist and this will turn his erstwhile supporters against him. They cannot afford to put an atheist in a high place. And I doubt very much if any warning or advice will be accepted. These will be brushed aside, and we may look for trouble.
2. The next is personal. All that has been rejected, and mostly a priori rejected by colleagues and others, now stimulates the article “General Semantics vs. General’s Semantics.” My papers, my talks, my offerings, are being accepted one by one, on every subject which has been pooh-poohed, and if God and the nervous system don’t forgive, man and society are going to forgive my two basic sins: (a.) having studied under Cassius Keyser and (b.) having known Lloyd Morain when he was a boy. This will soon become public property.
3. The third point is more constructive. I came upon a group of physicists and philosophers here discussing
The Basis of Scientific Thinking
Samuel Reiss, Philosophical Library
15 East 40th St., New York 16
I looked at the book and found it is based on “psycho-logics.” He has cribbed both phrases and material from A. K., and why not? Since a good General of Semantics does not have to be an adept in “Science and Sanity” and most of that work has been abandoned, it is not surprising that the abandoned portion has been appropriated by the Philistines.
I have read other books along the same line, and find no difficulty communicating (or being communicated to) by laboratory-scientists, in contradistinction to parlor-scientists where there has been dismal failure. But these men accepted my theme on “The Semantics of Space” just as the entomologists and ecologists at Berkeley have accepted my “The Logistics of DDT.” And before the evening was over, I found all kinds of professors, including PhDs, at my feet.
4. My final task here will be to visit the University of New Mexico, where there is reasonable assurance the philosophy department, already in alliance with Oliver Reiser, will give some consideration to my work, which is catching on here at a remarkable pace. I have still to do some field work for Oliver. I wish this could have been done for ETC, but the day of personality judgment and a priori rejection is over. There is going to be some kind of humanistic endeavor. And for the while, it will be in accord with Reiser’s Project Krishna and Project Prometheus.
I hope to see you next week some time, but things are moving terribly rapidly in both private and public career.
Cordially,
Samuel L. Lewis
[page 1 missing]
Letter to R. Joyner, June 10, 1970
It is true that I was once trained to be a logger, not only to fell trees right, but to preserve what was then known as ecology—any resemblances to the 1970 use or misuse of the term being coincidental. We also fell to preserve the total output of tree growth and to prevent erosion etc. etc. etc. etc. But this kind of background has no bearing on Esscience.
It is true that we have been adding the proper soil amendments and manures to change the texture so that even last year we had a surplus. Today I find the soil a very rich sandy loan, full of organic matter, about as excellent as I have ever encountered. I am not going to give you any more backgrounds of this other than to say when I was at Arnold Arboretum I could breathe and speak and also at any agricultural University or experimental station. At those places I could speak and breathe.
When I visited Oliver Reiser once he showed me how the city of Pittsburgh dealt with its problem of pollution; I have recently in London which is remarkably different today. But why get into a fight where I do not belong.
Esscience demands good essayists. They have to be able to write. Sure they use some facts which according to General Semantics might be regarded as “referents” but these referents may be totally disjunct. The name of the author is the thing. Just after I wrote last to Oliver Reiser—I believe I sent you the copy—I came upon one of the recent books on “ecology.” It seems today that the dialecticians and existentialists are everywhere. Their facts must be facts; the pertinence of these facts is beside the point.
Now ordinarily any attempt of an outcast to speak would be shunned, but I must use super-logic:
A. My income has gone way up.
B. Nader is affecting the young people of the country more than Marx, perhaps more than Martin Luther King (I mean the flesh and blood human beings who are young, not the newspaper reports about such persons.)
C. The organic gardening industry, its attendant food stores and the restaurants are thriving and expanding.
D. The fight against drugs—I mean drugs by which I mean drugs—is causing the young people to bypass anacin, excedrine and aspirin in all its forms; and Sleep-eze and no-doze and a lot of laboratory derived beauty additives.
This is pinching a lot of shoes but swelling my coffers, and when rigorous thinking touches the pocketbook and touches it favorably it cannot always be thrust aside.
To me the life and work of the late Lord Russell (in his mathematical and logical articles and some on science,) Cassius Keyser (and a whole host of philosophers at Columbia University and perhaps NYC,) Count Korzybski, Oliver Reiser and now Archie Bahm, are opening the doors to honest, impersonal logistics.
I am about ready to write on “meta-semantics” and pollution problems. In General Semantics you have to have a “referent,” you have to have facts, but these facts do not have to be coordinated. In meta-semantics they must be. In other words—and I say it regretfully—General Semantics is related to Esscience and Meta-Semantics must be related to science and no nonsense.
A General Semanticist may be a verbalist; sometimes he must be; a Meta-Semanticist may also use words, but he must connect them in the same manner a statistician uses graphs.
For example, I throw at you certain problems and words which GS has bypassed:
Ecology Pollution Middle Class
Drug Psychic Psychedelic
Hallucination Environment
Phosphate Deterioration
Progression Evolution Education
I think Russ, that is enough, I am no longer bemoaning. I am meeting more and more and more young people. Every single week since the beginning of the year, more new faces and there are signs now that when I return to San Francisco my audiences will increases immensely. The young want objectivity honesty and purpose.
You should see the procession of apologies I have been getting from people and groups that snubbed me in the past. I always felt with my first name I should have to go through the same rigmarole as Samuel Morse. My position is strengthened from reading recently a lot more of another Samuel i.e. Clemens, known as Mark Twain. I wish that every pretender had to read what he said about the receptions that Morse and Darwin and other contributors to our culture received from the establishments of their time. I don’t think any of your colleagues care to know that Darwin was turned down for associating for the “wrong people.”
But now a reaction has set in. Youth wants to know. The elders have been teaching the virtue of excitement and the importance ofSuperemotionalism. No more rigor. The result is after having heard me speak, they are ready to throw the book at all the champion book throwers—and that is wrong too.
I am leaving this letter open excepting to tell you I am sending a copy of it to “Science.” It would be interesting if you would attend some of the meetings of the scientists, the real scientists, at the forthcoming convention in San Francisco.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
June 16, 1970
Dear Russ:
It is not yet 6 A.M. We are off on a tour to meet a lot more young people. I am now welcome everywhere from the Colorado border to Albuquerque which is becoming a large city. It is mostly the young excepting some professors at the university. The doors are all open and I expect more to open today.
When history is written and we get rid of the slop of the day, it will be found that there is a movement, a sort of pioneering endeavor here, easily comparable to that of the Mormons, indeed not too far from the land of the Mormons, where enterprising young Americans are coming. Only here they are finding communes.
There are roughly speaking two kinds of communes: (a) animal farms which get a lot of publicity; (b) new age endeavors which of course, do not. Both the New Left and the Establishment don’t want that!
Between times I talk on pollution. Everything is important but facts. The same with ecology. In our endeavors here we are considering ecology, I mean the ecology of the scientists, not of the press, the sociologists and all those classes abhorred by AK who nevertheless monopolize the platforms and the channels of communication. I tell them where problems have been solved. But they, already prejudiced against the establishment and all its scions, eat these facts up. So I become doubly popular.
I have already written on this subject either to you or sent carbons to you. The other night I had a long discussion, and nobody shut me up, on the short- range pessimism and long-range optimism. Fortunately I have received a very cordial letter from one of the world’s top reclamation engineers who has been most successful in all things but—you guessed it—publicity. Solutions which do not establish somebody’s ego, or pocketbook are not wanted.
But I understand that before the end of the week at least one more curious writer and soon at least one, more curious film-taker is coming. Perhaps more. And this is only an iota of my now public life. I’ll add more when I return.
June 17, after return. We purchased a number of books including Lord Snow’s A Second Look. I see problems, I see solutions and I see personality-reactions dominating both problems and solutions. And “The Tyranny of Words” marches on. Communication with the young grows facile, and successful. I do not want to be a recluse but I am no longer going to knock on doors that do not welcome me. I have, besides all things referred to directly and indirectly, a grand project of (or more than one) in the Washington area and in the Boston area. I shall have enough to do on the Berkeley campus. They are taking me seriously now and the same may soon be true with other campuses. I still stick to Lord Snow: there are men of objective experiences and other (maybe even wiser) of subjective opinions. They are still apart in emotionalized conflicts of the day.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
July 5, 1970
Mr. Russ Joyner
ISGS
507 Sansome St.
San Francisco, Ca. 94111
My dear Russ:
It is very early Sunday morning. I reached home late Friday night and had an exceedingly busy Saturday, chiefly because it was the birthday of my god-grandchild. I am still, I hope, human and humane enough to observe and honor some social customs. Also I have today world correspondences. The term “world” being in accordance with universal geography and perhaps “God.” But any resemblance to the term as commonly used or misused in social practices is quite coincidental and may be unimportant. But finding a letter from Vocha even if I telephone later makes one feel that things should be put on paper most definitely.
I am at a sort of crossroads but if you accept this term in a Euclidean sense it means nothing. Someday I hope to convince some of you Euclideans of the functional possibilities of non-E space, and that this can be applied in meeting non-spatial problems; but I feel exactly like Shaw when he said he felt he could convince a banker of the truth of socialism but never a banker’s clerk.
Inasmuch as we do not live in either Euclid’s 3+ dimensional space or in the present day accepted pseudo-Hegelian sub-Euclidean space (right, left, center,) literary communication is a farce. The word “communication” has been captured by the Philistines making it almost impossible for man to actually communicate with his fellowmen. I am asking nobody to accept the sound solid fact of having been an Emersonian for generations, that when I actually went to live in the far off woods in northern New Mexico hundreds of young people—human biological beings, not thoughts in the minds of some statistician or editor—actually came to see me. And if you want to get very human or sub-human, I am almost worm out from lip-service to beautiful young girls. I have no intention to try and convince any dialectician of these presumable realities for if I have been bussing girls I have also been hugging young men by the multitudes, and expect this career to continue as it has, with or without publicity.
Quite accidentally one of the “world saviors” also appeared in my neck of the woods, which was a neck of the woods and not a figure of speech. This was Christopher Hills, and it is a little awkward for an incarnation of Hans Christian Anderson’s young imp from “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to perceive be had nothing on. Today you can speak against God all you want, but there are certain Untouchables, and it is remarkable that super-God made all untouchables British, Americans, or Hindus. Nobody else, not even Jews. I can’t say that the mighty have fallen because I never saw any might in them.
This will be posted before the events of the day. All the upper portions of the Rio Grande Valley look upon me as a potential folk-hero, but I never know, nor do I care to know, whether this is because of studies, knowledges, and achievements; or because of the rejections by establishments. I began my meeting in Albuquerque with a prayer :
“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven
Excepting in the Near East and Vietnam. Amen.”
That did it. I had the crowd before the celebration, but the crowd, all young, kept on increasing in size until I had to go.
Well Russ, I got a beautiful letter from Dale Woelfle. He has just left “Science” and has a staff job at the University of Washington in Seattle. I have written my friend Bryn Beorse about him. My actual life has demonstrated at every step the doctrine of Lord Snow that we have two cultures: 1. based on facts and 2. based on opinions. Both are needed, both are very necessary, but they are quite different. I cannot impose but it is certain that there is a vast difference in outlook. I am not even trying any more to reach subjectivists, for there are a number of situations piling into both my private and public lives, which are extending my life and career to the uttermost.
The first information I received upon return was that a publisher of some means was coming here to get my life story. I am calling myself Timon of San Francisco, a sort of Timon of Athens in reverse. I certainly do not intend to impress or impose upon personalities who do not wish to be impressed. They will go on spreading confusions, as in now being done with regard to pollution, and make it most difficult to solve problems of the day which could easily be solved if they would get out of the way, which they certainly will not. Anyhow this man is coming here very shortly, and it is not going to be very nice to find a Christopher Hills quoting AK all over the place and therefore being accepted while a pupil disciple of Cassius Keyser not only continues to hammer on, and is beginning to win the young multitudes as the maestro did, but in greater numbers.
From this point on I can only tell you there is an explosion in my private life. Every rejection, every snub, every turn down by the high and mighty has new become a weapon in my hands. The success at Geneva is now bringing one a sort of fame among the famous. But I do not believe and never have believed that personalisms and name-droppings solve anything. In fact, I am frightened about opening mail because further good news at this time would mean too many missions. Let me tell you one, and this one illustrates the great gap between myself and all sorts of establishments:
I am excepting to meet in a very short while a Rabbi from Jerusalem and a Palestinian Arab who is a citizen of Israel. While the great men who appeal to greatness of names and paucities of facts hurl or demand actions, but never get into actions themselves, this person and his very close associates expect to have some of the raucous sitting down together at tables, to be performing what others are demanding but never do, and sooner or later some of our literary people may accept the policies of scientists and legalists, that a few sound facts are worthy of consideration, even if they come from the “wrong” people.
This dynamic pragmatic program for the Near East is not new, far from new. I have no intention to waste time trying to convince the literati and egocentrics of any hard facts of history or of life. It is not worth it.
Following the letter from Dale Woelfle, I expect to attend some meetings at the California Academy of Sciences where the “wrong” person will ask some Andersonian questions:
Which cities in the world have the worst traffic problems?
Which cities in the world have the most smoke problems?
Which cities in the world have the most congestion problems, including slums, etc.,etc.
What coordination is there between these various types of problems?
What efforts have been made to solve these problems?
When are we getting to permit coordination of answers to these various dilemmas to be published independently of the personalities involved in the various discussions?
You see, Russ, as you have said, the tragedy of the world is that we do not permit facts which confuse issues. We stick to personality. In Europe, in many lands, only scientists are permitted to write or speak officially on scientific problems. In America, it is the top commentators.
Well, Russ, we are going to have a breakthrough, and if it does not come from one source, it is coming from another. I have been hoping now for generations to see a science of semantics comparable to laboratory sciences, as AK wished. I am no longer bothered. The doors are opening everywhere else. I may have to go to Washington as soon as I can clear affairs here, and no nonsense. The young are coming in greater and greater numbers. I have more and more contacts in high places all over, and I have friends who, though they may be few in number, are solid friends. And their social geography is an actual time-space geography and not an editorial or literary claim. And I am too busy in constructive efforts to be mad at anybody.
Recently, I have had a series of personality conflicts in which I demanded and received absolute surrender, unconditional surrender. And in every case, it was followed by strong bonds of friendship. So that as soon as the personality was removed, we have been working together in solid fraternal terms, and forgotten all earlier differences. I wish some Americans would sometimes study some American philosophies, including “the solution of the egocentric predicament” by the non-realists of NYU.
Faithfully and sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
Mr. Lloyd Morain
1274 Filbert
San Francisco, Ca.
July 24, 1970
Dear Lloyd:
One of the great weaknesses of this century has been the failure to apply the logistics of Science and Sanity to the problems of the day. Today “problems” are confusions which can be clarified only by the “right” people and no one knows exactly who the “right” people are or should be. But the failure to apply the principles of logic and logistics found in Science and Sanity and Lord Russell and elsewhere, are going to give me splendid opportunities which I may not deserve but I certainly have the opportunities.
The headlines today are concerning the legends very popular in Americas that grains are the source of proteins perhaps even the best source. It is so. No unknown person can get up and protest. It just isn’t done. True, I was permitted to participate in great food conferences when they were dominated by scientific scientists. Indeed, I have been a welcomed guest at scientific conferences which discussed food problems, but I have enough sense, after the nonsense in the discussions on psychedelics, to keep quiet. In those apparent public forums who you were mattered, and what you knew did not matter. And this is giving me today the most splendid opportunities, not necessarily deserved, to speak on some subjects which I claim to know, but have been barred from speaking on by practically all so-called respectable groups in this area. Amen.
I attended a gathering of scientists recently concerning pollution. The commentators had everything down pat. The chief speaker among them said “we are all to blame.” The scientists in the audience did not agree. But I guess we are all to blame because the polite “right” people said we are all to blames and who am I to dispute with the polite “right” people. Nevertheless, I may be sent for to do some desert reclamation work in Arizona. At least the money is being offered and I certainly have the goodwill of the department of dry lands research of the University of California. But I notice in reading scientific magazines that it has been specifically discovered that the deadliest poison destroying the fish of Lake Erie comes from mercury compounds, even more than from sewage or from factory wastes. It is this sort of thing which make some partially pessimistic of our culture in general. Instead of thinking it through, or even thinking at all, we have high-level emotionalism from prominent persons carefully selected by other prominent persons, to discuss or even solve the problems of the day, and this includes semantic along with all the other forms of popular logic. Only today Lloyd, I am very close to striking the jackpot and you have no reason to object to my mentioning the hard but simple fact that the disciples of Count Korzybski as presently organized have far more interest in the personalities writing or reporting than in the knowledge conveyed. True, the ISGS is not necessarily as intransigent as the prose and most magazines in suppressing facts in order to proclaim personalities. I certainly have no reason to protest anymore for the doors are opening wide for me and I have piles of notes to support any stand I take.
The conclusion of the scientific-scientists that mercury poisoning may be the chief cause of the death of fish of Lake Erie is of course contrary to the views of experts. But I think now, with the rise of men like Nader, and the expose’ of the fallacious but exceedingly proper outlook that proteins come mostly from grains, we may save this nation and even the world. I can hardly protest that my logistics have led me to conclusions quite different from those of the official semanticists but they may not be quite different from the laws of nature, and I am going to be given the opportunity to demonstrate this, as I already have in establishing organic gardens here and elsewhere.
The proper people will continue to believe that proteins come from grains and ISGS has nothing to say. The scientists demonstrate otherwise. The proper people will blame everything on DDT while scientists uncover mercury or other kinds of poisoning, and ISGS has nothing to say. ETC.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Sept. 15, 1970
International Society for General Semantics
Post Office Box 2649
San Francisco, Ca. 94126
Dear Russ and company,
I am enclosing $8.00 for two copies of Understanding in a World of Words. I shall be very much interested in receiving this book.
This is being written at a time when one is receiving more and more commendatory letters from some of the most important people in the world. Also when colleagues and disciples have been most successful in accomplishing what all the verbalists, including all the semanticists who are verbalists, have not succeeded in doing: bringing Arabs and Israelis, Jews, Christians and Muslims together in dinners and other impossibly impossible accomplishments.
This is being done at a time when sociologists, members of peace organizations, churches and humanists, are 100% united, against. We are going to let them be united against.
These joint affairs will continue when this person leaves for New York and a speech at Columbia University also is in his itinerary. We are hoping the time will come when writers, such as the author or authors of Understanding in a World of Words will be willing to listen even to prove their own theses to such a person as,
Sincerely yours,
Samuel L. Lewis
October 12, 1970
Mr. Russ Joyner
I.S.G.S.
507 Sansome St.
San Francisco, California
Dear Russ:
I have sent you copies of critical letters. Last night something happened—I am not going to try to follow it up, but will report. I heard a tail-end of a broadcast by the N.Y. General Semantics Society in which the speaker deplored the existence of so many problems caused not so much by the problems themselves, but by the verbal and emotional atmosphere and conclusions which seem to dominate society.
I have always been ready to write on the hopelessness of the American situation. Everybody is supposed to be firm for the word “democracy.” The chairman, of course, is a superior being, but he is always very inferior to the speaker, who is so marvelous, that it is considered rude to dispute—except in politics where everybody is supposed to dispute. This is the first time I have felt any hope for any sane consideration of pollution. The young protesters go around here with stickers on their cars to stop pollution. Magazines are full of hopelessness, but the scientists themselves whom I have contacted, declare the hopelessness is due to the verbal atmospheres, and we are not going to stop verbalisms—yet. Yet I am glad that some people, calling themselves Semanticists, are willing to face logical and unemotional discussions of actual problems besetting the world.
Circumstances beyond my control made me feel it necessary to work for peace in the Near East. Yes, this is much more difficult than facing pollution. In facing pollution, one can make an actual breakdown into actual facts and factors, although this is not done in literary articles and seldom in open debates—except among and by laboratory scientists.
The atmosphere here is almost at times one of despair. It is by far the quietest October I have ever witnessed in New York during a political campaign. The Times has nothing but politics—page after page after page. But you never hear these things discussed by the people, and there’s been a singular lack of opposition to any of my proposals for or toward peace in the Near East. The complete absence of anything like Keyser’s, “The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking,” has given me a clear field on the subject where the floors and doors have been barred to me in my native city—God bless San Franciscans. The News I have had is excellent. Here I have had no trouble with Arabs, Jews, the young, or university professors. I am getting brave enough to wish to tackle the press.
The low esteem with which General Semantics is held by the Philosophy departments of Cornell and Columbia is, of course, balanced by the fact that your colleagues believe a peasant has no right to interfere with the sober discussions of gentlemen. But Russ, this is a New Age. Fortunately for me personally, Professor Blau, the last disciple of Cassius Keyser in this region, has a low opinion of these Philosophy departments; and we are pretty much in accord on everything. But, of course, I am the wrong person?
The young people have discovered that all my statements on Palestine are based on knowledge of history, religion, geography, agriculture, etc., etc., etc. (any resemblance between this etc. and that of the magazine which capitalizes these letters is coincidental, or is it?).
The young have discovered that during years of existence in this world I have occasionally or more than occasionally met the “right” persons. Some of these “right persons” have been quite willing to listen or have been pleased by the way I have listened to them. Or, in the ease of Professor Blau, not only listened but succeeded—although not a single organization, church, or other worthy in San Francisco has ever permitted any expression from me. And this, in turn, is making one a hero, not because of knowledge but because of rejections, generally a priori rejections by the “right people” in a Democracy.
In a few days I shall be going to a rather secret convention and then to Boston and then back here. I am unable to find time to write articles for the editor who wants them. It is even possible that a few people here will look at the Oakland Tribune clipping I shall be showing them. The young do not want war. They are even willing to listen to the virtues of Nasser and to accept his accomplishments outside of international complications. Their elders are not. And believe me, Russ, most unfortunately, the people of coming generations will look askance on this one which rejects facts unless the person presenting the facts pleases them for some artificial unimportant reason.
These very complications have made it impossible to pursue certain programs which would have redounded to your immediate benefit. I still think it is possible to have either a science of philosophy or philosophic science. I still think it possible to rise above Euclidean nonsense and the almost universal stupidity of judging every person according to the relation of his views with the way some rather illiterate Frenchman sat in a convention after the great revolution. No, Russ, I don’t fit into Euclidean and sub-Euclidean universes, but I find the great majority of young people do not either.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
October 22, 1970
Mr. Russ Joyner
I.S.G.S.
507 Sansome Street
San Francisco, California 94111
Dear Russ:
The surprising news that associates of Dr. S. I. Hayakawa and possibly the General himself is behind projections coming out of this person is so marvelous that I am sending copy of letter written to Professor Archie Bahm, the friend, colleague, and disciple of Oliver Reiser.
The day is over when smart people can render personality judgments on any Jude the Obscure. This itself is one of the reasons why we have constant war in the world. People who exploit others cannot promote peace. But there is one difference now, that I may not write my diatribe against Generals of Semantics. The two big things are the exceeding cordiality from Professor Blau at Columbia and the fact that Don and his friends are behind a peace program which originated out of this ego. I may doubt whether he would have listened if he found that this ego was the originator of the program, but let that pass. Peace is more important than any ego either of a General or a Jude the Obscure.
I have always wanted to work with and can now overlook the self-important people who simply wouldn’t let me speak on subjects which I thought I understood.
I already wrote you about the attitude of philosophical departments at some of the universities I have visited. One could easily add to this list. If we go by car, we shall certainly visit Princeton, Pennsylvania, and Howard. And I am on the agenda to speak at Howard whenever I wish. I am not in the least interested in the ego reactions of those persons who thought that the world would be saved by stepping on every Jude the Obscure who came along. I am not very good at value judgments and even less at psychiatry. But when the very top people of the very top world organizations greet one as an equal one gets a little tired of unnecessary blockages.
If we can work together for peace in the Near East or anywhere, I can overlook the past.
Kindest regards,
Samuel L. Lewis
c/o L. Less
27 W. 71 St.
New York, New York 10023
October 26, 1970
Mr. Russ Joyner
I.S.G.S.
507 Sansome St.
San Francisco, California
My Dear Russ:
Life is so full of drama, one actually gets tired. The more one reads non-scientific books, the more one becomes aware in our culture that the great majority of writers treat other human beings as if they were some form of concepts in their own minds; or mannequins or robots to be handled according to certain formulae. Then if the formulas do not work, one gets angry.
This is so true. I regret to see the failure of many attempts to establish Shangri-Las, especially in India and the United States. I noticed in India and Pakistan that farmers and producers considered it part of their “liberty” not to copy the successes of their neighbors. It might bring them more wealth, but it lowered their sense of self-esteem.
A similar thing is happening in this land where more and more experiments are being made in social living. The generic term commune is used. I am not going to ask the semanticists to define commune, or for that matter any of the terms which are thrown about as “solutions” or “explicators” of the problems of the day. There is too much before me, and some of the situations promise more money, more followers, more friends, and more understanding. Sooner or later it had to come to this.
You may get some ideas from items in the letters enclosed. I told the people at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston that there are no problems; that there is just refusal on the part of literary people to accept answers which did not make them comfortable. They could not answer this without going contrary to their own teachings, so the door is open, and a lot more doors are open or opening. Do not know when I will return.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
c/o Lonnie Less
27 West 71 Street
New York, New York 10023
October 30, 1970
Russ Joyner
I.S.G.S.
507 Sansome Street
San Francisco, California
Dear Russ:
It is very hard to impress certain people that there may be a moral law in the universe; or that we can stop wars by our constant shunning eye-witnesses to world events. The letter to Art Hoppe is not nonsense. It has been followed by more of the same. I think there is hope in the country. At long last the press is paying some attention to eye-witnesses of world events.
We’ve had this endless war in Vietnam because the press and the state Department thought it was very smart to reject the eye-witness report of my best friend who died of a broken heart. Last night I went to a meeting and publicly called down a cleric. In the end he apologized to me, and so did his own claque one by one. The telephone has been ringing like anything, especially long distance calls between here and the Pacific coast, both ways. The local press which has previously refused practically every eye-witness account from me is now interviewing my colleagues and disciples. The University of California has a class in my own work, and it is possible that other institutions will follow.
The day of smart-aleck a priori rejections is over. But I may not have to make this a theme in my autobiography, which is now being sought. There has practically been no trouble anywhere. Sooner or later honesty and objectivity are going to win. We are not going to have any more “Jude the Obscures.”
Next week I go to Washington for a few days and then return. Then I must write because a publisher wants my things—no more smart-aleck a priori rejections. I am no longer angry at anybody. The people who did that have done me favor. They have caused me to be more alert and more careful, but never silent again when I am in the right … that is, when I have information on the subject being discussed. I am going to be very careful, and even gentle and compassionate, in an age which understands compassion as its predecessors did not, would not. Everything looks exceedingly promising.
Best Regards,
Samuel L. Lewis