Lloyd Morain
795 Pine St.
San Francisco 8
May 5, 1958
Dear Sam:
You may wish some response to your unhappy letter of the 21st to Mary. I’ve asked Mary if she has any objection to my writing in her stead, and she hasn’t. In fact, she is so baffled by your comments that she doesn’t think of any response much beyond “I’m sorry that you feel the way you do.
Now Sam old boy, the situation is somewhat different with me. We’ve been friends since about 1937 when I arranged two lectures for you at my house through at least a couple months ago when I took some groceries to you and you had such a bad cold I didn’t think you’d want me to linger. During the past 4½ years since Mary and I have been in S.F. we’ve had you to dinner parties and have actively participated in parties at Gavin’s in your behalf. Now that you have an accusative tone I am reflecting on these matters. Could you, who perhaps has never invited Mary and I to anything perhaps be the actual object of you own dissatisfaction?
I don’t want to make you feel any worse than you do, but the arguments in your letter, so far as I can make them out, suggest to me that you are open to real hurts in your future inter-personal relationships. I sincerely hope to reticulate your own evaluations in this wide area of philanthropy.
From your letter I infer that now you are contributing to movements on the basis of how you feel those receiving your money react. Well, Sam people do respond graciously to those from who they receive—but only up to a point in time.
Mary certainly is interested in the world of the planned parenthood kind and in helping people to have healthy, wanted children, and in lessening the mounting population pressures. Toward this and she has for years devoted considerable amounts of time and money, and expects to continue. Fortunately there are other persons in the world who feel likewise and some of those we do not even know of. A someone who has had considerably more experience than you in giving away money, I really feel you have yet to learn to separate the gift from the reaction of the receivers. I believe planned parenthood is of basic social service importance, and those who feel this way and are able should contribute to it.
The past overall weeks have been unusually hectic for us with many out-of-town persons anxious to receive various degrees of hospitality. There was the old humanist friend from Boston who just wanted to talk with other humanists. There has been the former editor of Freedom who wanted to renew acquaintance and learn more of certain fields of endeavor. There was the woman affected with Schweitzeritis and wanted to meet persons who would hear with interest her experiences in Africa. There was the organizer of the New York Chapter of the ISGS who wished to discuss organizational problems. There has been the civil libertarian who has a case pending in a court and he wished to discuss certain phases of this and with certain lawyers. Another acquaintance had a heart attack and that brought involvements. There have been other out-of-towners too. Now, Sam, as one who has taken certain responsibilities in certain organizations I am obligated to fulfill certain functions. One of these is to help visitors feel that mental and human uplift which comes through association. The beauties of the Bay Area are not sufficient for some persons. I don’t complain about my official and semi-official tasks, and try to meet them, even though but often badly. The point of this Sam is that it is the nervous systems of these people with whom I have my concern. Assuredly I would not choose to have such an active evening program if I were but thinking of my own comfort. I have to constantly think of who some visitor would really like to meet or to talk with, and try to make arrangements accordingly. This is a responsibility which many persons never seem to let enter their lives.
If you feel you have any legitimate beefs toward Mary and myself why don’t you extensionalize them? Obviously something is gnawing within you. Can I help in any way?
I don’t intend to let you, a friend of more than 20 years, just slide out of my life-space too easily.
As ever,
[Lloyd Morain]
May 12, 1958
My dear Lloyd:
I have never forgotten that our recent or present fracas started out with a warning and perhaps advice that you were about to preside over an international meeting in a foreign land, purporting to “solve” or at least face some of the world’s problems. I have kept this before me every moment and have taken every possible move to orient you. In this I have completely failed and admit it.
I must, however, call your attention to two very recent events. One is what is happening to Vice-President Nixon. It has happened before and it is hush-hush. Now Lloyd I am calling to your attention that you also like hush-hush. I don’t know what is gained by hush-hush but whatever it is I should like to know what is “scientific” about it. 1 am not going into details here.
The other has been an announcement in the newspapers and over the air by a leading scientist against the immediate possibilities of space-travel. I have always assumed and wrongly assumed that organizations verbally established to discuss scientific subjects and scientific procedures were interested in such things. Oh yes there are, but I have taken the wrong foot.
Success in establishing real communication has been my own and others. Success in getting papers published on communication belongs to quite a different set of people.
My love, my friendship has gone astray. I shall defend to the death your right to value-judgments. But I shall take no further part in value-judgment movements that verbally pretend to be anti-value-judgment. And I can only say that Korzybski has gone the way of the prophets—which he probably did not want—in finding his so-called disciples verbalizing the “unspeakable” and doing everything but rigorous thinking.
I have not and do not indulge in post-mortem tête-à-têtes with others, not even my best friends, on the behavior, personality or anything of the kind of my friends. I try to hide their defects from others. Although in some sense it does not pay, I stick to that. And if my friends cannot stand the light of logic, I can only feel deeply ashamed. But it is they, not I, who from time to time have to face the searchlights of publicity.
I had hoped you would seriously face some of the world’s difficulties with the matrices your teacher A.K. has given. I must apologize for crossing your path and causing you any mental or emotional anguish in this regard. I can only hope that someday the inner fear which you manifest will be faced and overcome.
Faithfully,
Sam
May 15, 1958
My dear Lloyd:
On the eve of departure for a short trip to Hollywood I have received an excellent letter from you. It is not easy to examine any letter or thesis or theme and do so impersonally.
The other day this occurred: I happened to mention the word “Humanism” in with a lot of other terms and the reaction should interest you: Humanism meant the Morains and the Morains meant Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood meant birth control and birth control was one of the most vicious things offered to mankind. It is an excellent example of types of multiordinarity, identification and verbal symbolism that I have ever encountered. It is also an example of what I have been trying to avoid.
Nothing hurts me more than “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” And if you are guilty—and one must assume for the instant you are not—it should never be, in my sight through association. I believe I would defend to the death the right of other people to stand up for their causes. I believe I would do it, not say it.
The last definition I read concerning Aristoteleanism is that it led to conclusion without Premises. Anybody could draw any conclusion because nobody knew exactly what Major Premise was involved, or what Premises. When Bertrand Russell was here I was told after his speech (his first appearance in San Francisco) that I was the only one who asked him a sensible question. I do not know that and I do not say that but I was approached by both strangers and friends. It led to confirm, what I had considered in my mind, what he calls “The Confusion of Types.”
The rise, in my mind and my ego, of the integral approach has been going over now for almost 40 years. Given groups of facts, situations, etc., how can we weave them into a pattern without leaving anything or anybody out. My few very successful and cordial conversations with “big men”—and I have not had many—were all based on this approach. I think I told you that I studied Integral Calculus the last time for psychological reasons. The behavior of the mind which takes in all and omits nothing.
The continuance of dualism in behavior if not in verbal philosophy is something I look upon as detrimental to the human race. It has been awkward in your case for I have been very much afraid, that if anything ever became public, you would be guilty by association as above, and that is the last thing I want. It is terrible and I won’t indulge in it to win an argument or prove anything.
I think your letter proves that you are wed to analysis and analysis of a type quite close to actual Aristoteleanism. There is nothing wrong in this of itself. But I see the rise of a movement which calls itself “anti-Aristotelian” and adheres to the same foibles as those who pursue a traditional course. It is of no account that people like me (or do not.) It is of all account whether I am adhering to principles laid down by Boole, Peirce, Russell (I omit Whitehead), Cantor, Frege, and Keyser, etc. By etc. here I mean the same persons and personalities who are quoted in the texts of “Science and Sanity.”
I have never taken any courses in “communication.” But I did tell a South American the other day that if I had been Vice-President of the U.S. I would not have been mobbed. He asked me what I would have done. I told him. He said, “No, you would not have been mobbed, you would have been welcomed.”
As I have already succeeded in communicating both by verbal and non-verbal methods I have the right to say it. Right by experience, by territory. And I see no need to indulge in personalities.
The rise of a movement which claims to be opposed to personal value-judgment should be proven by adhering to some form of logistics in accord with its principles. If you have private reasons—and you have excellent private reasons, for your acts and facts, that is one thing. As president and leader of certain movements, you should be honest and willing to face the gamut of the matrices which you establish.
If I am anti-religious, it is because the religious people do not adhere to the principles which they acclaim. Most religious people have three sets of dogmas: A creed (generally the Anathanasian), an indeterminate mass of pseudo-premises (the Bible), and their own personal or impersonal outlook.
When I pass to the non-religious people who have laid downs sets of principles I would like to assume some adherence to those principles. Not adherence on the part of others, but of themselves. I would like Lloyd Morain, for example, not as Lloyd Morain the private citizen, but Lloyd Morain, the president of the I.S.G.S. be willing to face some actual problem of a world outside of our skins (whether this world is real or not) and face it thoroughly by the principles which he is supposed to represent.
I believe that the Planned Parenthood Movement is one such movement which can be justified and upheld thoroughly. But only by a recognition of the whole earth.
I should expect that Lloyd Morain, the President the I.S.G.S., not Lloyd Morain the private individual, would be willing to listen first to one Sam Lewis or Tom Jones or anybody who satisfies the qualifications of being human as involved in the principles of the Humanist Movement, tell and be respected as he tells, the existence of non-Aristotelian logical systems in this world and how they have effected peoples, cultures and civilizations. I know of at least two. But I have been begged not to present them to the I.S.G.S., despite its purported platform. For there is a point at which the individuals involved who carry the staff, not having reached the stage where they can impartially and impersonally face cosmic, integrative or even honest reportial thinking would receive such news with gravity.
I have to tell you now, Lloyd, that I know of at least two non- Aristotelian logical systems. If I accuse you of anything, and as a private citizen you are not guilty, it is a lack of humility and curiosity in your public roles.
If you are right in your claims it should be a “right” based on the principles of Humanism or I.S.G.S (in theory) without any name calling of any kind except where name-calling is compelled.
I believe that every problem which is facing the world is solvable. I believe that the logistics of such solutions are in accord with, if not identical to Korzybski’s teaching. I reject the deductive, the differential and derivative systems as solvers of world problems whether these are presented by Semanticists, Humanist, Evangelists, Religionists, infidels or Hegelians of any and all sorts whatsoever.
I have to apologize if, in the course of discussion I have inferred or referred to personal weaknesses on your part, apart from the crusading movements to which you adhere. I despise guilt-by-association.
My personal letters were personal. These are small things. I am not working for or on or with small things. I have offered to throw before you big things. I still do not know who are the officers or officials of the locals of the G.S. movement. I would have considered it as a great favor, at one time, if I had been so informed. I was not so informed and I cannot accept in my heart that you had any good and valid reason for at least not telling me who to contact. I would have been on my own. I am on my own and probably always have been on my own. That is my strength and my weakness, my undoing and my triumph.
But these things are little when I have seen and witnessed useless and needless starving, turmoil and vast human and humane problems which I consider solvable. Inwardly I am an optimist.
In closing I must refer you to the Ayres-X debates. I can’t think of the name of X at the moment. He was a smarty-alec British philosopher who like Kleinschmidt in L.A. wanted to be on the forefront of every movement no matter what. And when Ayres wrote his first books this man came out and attacked Ayres for his lack of attention to Ethics. Well, I have read a lot of books on Math which involved no ethical system either. The result was that Ayres felt justified. I would have objected to Ayres on logical grounds (if at all) . I would have stuck to his own themes and theses and see if he would have stood up under them. I did the same with professor Black. I would like to have shared this with you too.
This has made me feel you are terribly afraid of something, really terribly afraid. If you can’t as man-to-man, no obligation involved, listen to what I wrote Black or to non-Aristotelian logical systems, what is left?
Deepest apology for any reflection on character; no apology for any reflection on argument that you do not adhere to Korzybski et al.
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
April 21, 1958
106 Ethel Ave.,
Mill Valley, Calif.
My dear Mary,
Contributing may be a joy or it may be a duty. A contribution may be made and the contribution received with joy. A contribution may be made and the contributor may be greeted with joy.
You have your many circles of warm heart-friends. You also are very much interested in Planned Parenthood. I believe that the work of the Planned Parenthood groups is one of the most important in the whole world, but 1 also believe there are other important movements.
I am wondering how much your warm heart-friends are interested in helping the Planned Parenthood Movement. Surely you must find some among them who are able to give you ample funds to help you in the propagation and functions of this movement. For if one’s friends do not turn out to be one’s friends, how can one be sure of his path in life?
It is curious that of the other “important movements” (my own subjective conclusion of course) I have in every instance been warmly greeted and treated as a friend by them, although I did not ask this. Under the circumstances one is not only warmly tempted, one becomes downright eager to make his contributions to such groups rather than to those groups who are delighted more in the contribution than in the contributor.
So please remove my name from the roster of contributors to Planned Parenthood. Instead my money is going to those who are seeking to alleviate starvation, etc. in other parts of the world and who have warmly welcomed me into their circles.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina St.
San Francisco 3, Calif.
October 11, 1958
My Dear Lloyd:
Well, Thursday night I upset the apple cart and it is possible that I shall embark on a career of upsetting apple carts. I attended a symposium or colloquium of three professors all qualified (?) according to accepted standards to speak on Zen Buddhism which they could not define and mild not give, so far as I could see a single referent.
When the meeting was opened to questions, my first question undid immediately everything they had been discussing for an hour. Two of them were so obvious misfitted by their own statements, statements made without referents of any kind, that the audience could plainly see and laugh at them.
The other man brought up the semantic situation and I held him to the point as to whether he preferred maps to territories. I am not going to argue the point. So far as Zen Buddhism and other Oriental matters are concerned the G.S movements prefers the maps of men with college degrees to all the territories of whosoever and whatsoever. And, of course, with a good dose of democracy added.
I dislike to challenge and dethrone men, especially when it impedes their earning a living. I was fortified by carrying books with me—which, after all, are rather mappish than territorial.
Fortunately the State Department has recognized my efforts and sees the viciousness of loose playing with purporting Oriental philosophies which exist mostly in the minds of the people who advocate them. I think there have been some pretty good philosophies put out, as well as some not so good, which have been self-disintegrating by adopting the verbiage of another part of the world.
There is a communication or it may be there are endless communications in Zen. but beyond that those who have not experienced them have little right to draw any deductions therefrom. Not only are these potentially fraudulent but they may make it harder to present the actual content of actual Zen.
The same applies to other matters. I did not over-press my point because Compassion is a fundamental element of Zen, that same compassion which the “authoritative speakers” denied. Let them. I only hope you, or someone in the G.S. movement will be honest enough to permit a clear presentation of Zen by one properly qualified to offer it.
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina St.
San Francisco 3, Calif.
December 1, 1958
My dear Lloyd:
I am enclosing herewith the notice from the International Society for General Semantics and copy of a letter recently written to Professor Reiser.
I think this last explains very clearly why I cannot possibly renew my subscription. Points of difference are too vast to be reconciled:
a. Operationalism (territorial experience ) as the basis for philosophy as against authoritarian abstraction or speculation.
b. Actual communication with all kinds of strange people without following the “acceptable” science (!!) of communication proposed by people who do not seem to have complete understanding of one another.
c. Belief in the jury system or something like it where the word of an honest layman is at least weighed against the testimony of a professor not given under oath or substantiated by actual experience.
Why go further? Reiser has at least reached the point of integration Occidental culture and may be able to go further. He also accepted the evidence of laboratory-techniques which are in accord with Thomson’s “Outline of Science” but have gone further since that time. Both these techniques and their subject-matter are rejected by some of the more recent schools dedicated to “anti-”Aristoteleanism rather than to pro-science, or pro-human-experience.
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina St.
San Francisco 3, Calif.
February 8, 1959
My dear Lloyd and Mary:
I wish to thank you for your postal card. I am very glad to learn that you are traveling in many lands and meeting with many peoples.
There is one thing I hope you can learn: that actual communication may turn out to be something very different from academic discussion on “communication” which often may cause disruption and disagreement.
I wrote you a letter when I received your card but my remarks of the moment prove to have been abortive. It seems that people of faraway places tend to judge a man by his knowledge or wisdom, and at least part of their response is objective and impersonal; while those close to home react and judge a person by his character—whatever that means, or by habits or what not.
If scientific development had depended upon the second, we might still be in the dark ages.
Last week I gave the talk at the actual Zen temple. This talk did not resemble in the least any of the drivel which passes around as “Zen” and which is about as much “Zen” as the “Protocols of Zion” represent the synagogue. I am very sorry that an intelligent person should become so subjective and depend on personality-reactions instead of being open and investigative.
So many doors have opened to me in Pakistan in the last two weeks that I am overwhelmed. But this Pakistan does not resemble the “Pakistan” of ETC. where an article appeared some time ago written by a man cloistered at Stanford University. It rather surprised me at the time that the campus was located in “Pakistan” but if that is what I.S.G.S. teaches, it is OK with me.
Fortunately there are people who are objective and impersonal in their search for facts, if not for truth. I had hoped you would be among them. I hope someday you will.
Faithfully,
Sam
August 6, 1959
My dear Lloyd:
Thank you. I do not think there can be any man more difficult than one who knows about Siam or Timbuktu or cheeseology and is not permitted to speak or express his views of Siam or Timbuktu or cheeseology when these are the subjects of discussion.
I remember when I was a difficult man at a biological conference. The subject was “Mendel Versus Lychenko.” After the arguments were in I challenged both speakers. The Chair ruled me out of order and this produced a clamor so I was permitted to speak. When the meeting was over 90% voted with me as against the combined following for Mendel and Lyshenko. Sure I was difficult, very difficult.
I do not care whether Hayakawa accepts my articles or not. I am sorry to remind you that I asked you a number of times to advise me where the G.S. meetings were held. I thought—and I may have been mistaken—that these articles would be discussed at meetings and that a person who has had the experience of Zen-meditation would be permitted to express his views on Zen-communication, based on objectivity as against the subjective opinions of one not so versed. It was denied me and I have concluded it was based on personality and not truth.
While everything you have said about Astrology may be true, that was simply a come-on. And I am sorry, Lloyd, you have fallen into your own trap. I wish it were not so. I repeat what I told you before, that I attended a meeting of scientists only, dedicated to the subject “Science and Semantics”, the question was asked, “Is there anybody in the Audience who has used Semantic Methods in Scientific Research.” It was repeated. Nobody answered. The Chairman was about to make a remark and I said; “Although I am not a member of this colloquium I have used G.S. Methods in Scientific research.” They gave me the floor. Not only that they gave me the class until I exhausted my territorial-reports—no maps of any kind. And they said I was hiding something which is true.
If you had acted favorably to that, if Hayakawa had given my papers consideration, if I had been given a single opportunity to present this either in your home or at meetings where you were chairman or otherwise I would not be difficult. Of course I am difficult. But with so many men whom I had admired withdrawing from the G.S.I. movement and with space given to Mortimer Adler of all people, your arguments, alas, fall on rather flat ground.
I wish you had been to Bryn’s lecture Saturday night when he attacked Einstein, etc. But I find very few G.S. members have really read all of “Science and Sanity” that there is little understanding of the integrative process and less of Russell’s “confusion of types,” etc.
What hurts me most is that you have become quite unpopular and this in turn reflects upon the spreading of some of the semantic outlooks which I feel should be more in the public consciousness. But G.S. today is coupled with names among multitudes with whom you do not come into contact.
Yesterday I recited a poem which came to me while sitting with Dr. Baker. The theme was “The Strange Psychology of the Chemical Elements.” I believe I shall have no trouble in getting it published.
There is nothing harder than for a territorialist to try to convince mappists. The last point is worth trying but may I remind You:
a. A bottle-washer had a terrific time getting an audience yet turned out to be England’s greatest physicist.
b. A couple of adventurer bums astounded the scientific world, against all precedents by announcing evolution.
c. The single element Uranium would not conform to a world which rejected alchemy, transmutation, etc. (you should read some of the stuff of the 90’s on this subject). But in the end the whole world accepted the difficult ones.
Yes, I might take up the possibility of presenting papers to Hawaii. I am difficult for I can present:
a. The rise of new languages as a result of the spread of education.(these come from the bottom and are not like Volapuk or Esperanto). The geographical milieu and details could be presented.
b. Actual communication in Actual Zen 1955-1960
c. 1960 Mysticism and 1960 Mystics. (e.g. Radhakrishnan)
d. Application to G.S. to the solution of Soil and water Problems.
I omit here the paper I tried to get on “Light and Color.” This because the views have recently been well expressed in “Scientific American.” But then I have my own mission. Have just written “I was not Mobbed”—I still remain one of the few Americans who turned a mob on the commies. Of course I am difficult, Very much so.
Sam
772 Clementina St.,
San Francisco 3, Calif.
October 7, 1959
My Dear Lloyd:
I greatly appreciate your having been in the audience last night.
I am very serious in plans to link universities in this country and abroad. The great line of demarcation is the habit, alas, in the United States, of importing Europeans to teach all manner of Asian Subjects and often doing it badly, that is, non-objectively. I do not want to use names in a letter. I had to write Dr. Spiegelberg of Stanford—whom I am mentioning in one of my manuscripts—that he is the only European teacher of Orientalia honored in Asia. As I heard this from six sources and in three countries it must have some validity.
Another cause of severance is in the case of the University of California. It is known as the atomic-bomb school, whether it deserves such a title or not. The fact that it is doing marvelous research in citriculture (and related sciences) and in soil-water conversion projects, etc. is not advertised.
I am planning my trip across the country so as to visit several universities on the way. Thus Michigan at Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and even Colgate and Cornell, with a possible diversion to Ohio State and a possible run up to Harvard. I shall by-pass Chicago and Yale which are among the worst offenders from the Asian points of view.
However I want to get lists of good American philosophers—I have quite a few names and many of these are now connected with universities in southern states which are not on my agenda. I do not think Charles Morris would pass as he is too ultra-metaphysical and quite unhistorical. Agreement is of no concern. I have always regarded the Logical Positivists as “my friendly enemies” needed to put the rest of us (including myself) in place. My missions are too serious, in my opinion, to tolerate nonsense on my part. I do not think we can integrate truth metaphysics until we examine the L.P. s wherein M=O, a real number.
Cordially,
Sam Lewis
February 15, 1960
My dear Lloyd and Mary:
I am about to leave these parts and may be gone a long, long time, so this is farewell. It is a strange farewell, quite out of keeping with my former departure. Then I had to say goodbye to a multitude of people, none of them connected with purported missions; now I am saying goodbye to a far lesser number but all connected with the purported missions. And not only are these welcomes being extended largely by actual Asians, but also by representatives of activities associated with American-Asian Relations. In some cases, and this is very important to me, the “brand name” persons have been removed and in their place are people who have had actual connection and actual knowledge of geographical-historical Asia.
The last official act of mine was to bring teachers of two Japanese Zen Sects together. The use of the term “Zen” here bears little or no relation to its use, or misuse in popular literature. In fact in the last three days I have listened to three talks by Zen monks and the one thing they had in common—indeed it was the “text” of their talk, that the books, lectures and articles with the label “Zen” were either 90% false, misleading and even dangerous and perhaps all of them were. I, myself, exempt from this the book by Professor Ogata who is the official representative of actual Japanese Zen, no matter what Western people think of other personalities and how much they laud “brand names” and the books thereof.
One of the biggest “brand names” who makes his living writing books on “Zen” confessed that Professor Ogata was probably correct in attacking him and his colleagues and asked for help and advice. Not only that—and here he differs from all the rest—he accepted it.
At the present moment I see episodes of anti-Semitism. When the Jewish Encyclopedia was written, non-Jews were excluded; what right had they to participate in such an affair. When the Islamic Encyclopedia was compiled, it was largely by Jews and Christians with a sprinkling of non-believers. This was “good scholarship” and praised all over—outside of Islamic circles. There is going to be a new Encyclopedia of Islam, one in which Muslims will at least participate. There is going to be an Encyclopedia of Buddhism in which the “fine scholarship” of the West will be excluded. The Encyclopedia of Buddhism will be by Buddhists about Buddhism just as the Encyclopedia of Judaism is about Judaism and by Jews.
But when it comes to Zen—yet—the “fine scholarship” is to be praised and used as the basis of deductive articles by other not so fine, but still “good Scholars.” Some articles go as far as to say there is little or no connection between Zen and Buddhism.
I do not regret , but I must call to your attention that Etcemanticism supports this method. I do not recall any article on anti-Smiticism which was not either written by a Jew or was favorable to the or a Jewish viewpoint. Contrariwise, when it comes to Zen, I have yet to find an article which was written by a Zennist or would be regarded as favorable by actual Zen devotees.
I have been told that Aristotelianism was that philosophical approach which ignored major premises. I see no difference in Etcemanticism and I leave here, Lloyd, compelled to call attention to this in my forthcoming book which consists largely or entirely from actual lessons from actual Zen Masters and teachers, all of whom were in the book in the 20th century, though some are now dead.
Approval has already been given by the English speaking Buddhists around the world, by the real Japanese-real-Zen sects and it is hoped that it will be read, if not accepted, by scholars who are as objective to facts in this field as they are in the actual scientific and other fields.
Communication in Zen could have been observed. I do not know any article subject as yet, where the subject has been approached from an event- and factual-standpoint of living, or recently living persons.
My position here applies to other things. I have been invited now to quite a few large universities in this country and to a multitude of them abroad. I believe that sooner or later scholarship in this field must be related to sincerity, honesty, experience; and not to conjecture or “brand names.”
Farewell,
Sam
November 11, 1962
My Dear Lloyd:
I am leaving today for Sacramento and Davis and may be back about the middle of the week. I am going to Sacramento because a woman whom I have known for many years has proposed taking biographical notes. These notes cover facets of life which will be mentioned below and perhaps coordinate with the integral philosophies of the day. In any event about a week ago I received a letter from Pakistan where they call me “the great integrationalist” though on the surface one cannot tell the exact meaning. I Should say that this word “integrationalist” is not an analytical appreciation.
The other day I met a man whose first name is Aaron, a friend of my landlady. He is writing a book on the philosophy of science. we both agreed that Von Reichenbach and Keyser were much clearer thinkers than Russell. This man belongs, he says, to the Logical Positivist School. It was, quite obvious that analytically we agreed on almost everything, but he has not developed the integrational function. So we have agreed to come together and discuss further the Project Prometheus etc.
From this point on we come to irrationalities. I remember your debate on Predictability, and I have to pass on here to the most obvious, simple and difficult form of predictability:
THE WOLF COMPLEX. The one thing we have not learned about Pearl Harbor is the acceptance of warnings by simple people. The service man on duty warned and was ignored. Bauke Carter, whom “everybody” accepted made a lot of predictions and had to commit suicide. The result has been bigger and better Bauke Carters.
I was then in touch with an M.T. Kirby who warned me over and over again of the Japanese plans. What happened to me is awful. Since then I have known at least four men who warned about impending international dangers—they were on the spot. Every one of them was snubbed. I myself went through this in Egypt and also once since.
The easiest, simplest and most dangerous form of predictability is the foreknowledge of events by a simple, unknown man. It is the old Greek story of “Wolf.” The number of forecoming or forthcoming events I have known in life from this source itself should be the basis of an essay. But I have known even “tough-minded” people who prefer assuming an occult faculty (which is quite beside the point), rather than accept the simple jury-testimonial, democratic method, which officially we laud and just as officially ignore.
THE INTEGRATIVE METHOD. I predicted the Italian invasion of Ethiopia a number of years ago. I was working with Whitie and when it came some men marveled at me. I said: “0 no, there was nothing strange, you don’t know how to integrate events.” So I got out a lot of trade statistics and financial reports, put them together by an integrative logic. I think they would have preferred the “occult.”
The most dramatic prediction a came from me when I said: “Stalingrad is the Verdun of this war.” The military called me up and put me on the carpet and in a few moments I had all of them on the carpet. There was not one who knew Asian history or Asian tactics, etc. And this has happened more recently when I predicted crop shortages in Russia and China respectively coming out of a simple application of integration to events and news, such as the diverting of phosphorus from fertilizers to be used in factories, etc., etc.
PERSONALISM AND NONSENSE. Last month a group of Zen Buddhist monks came here and had a convention. Without naming anybody, not a single writer, not a single local authority, not a single “expert” on Zen showed up. They dared not—a bunch of heels and humbugs whom we have taken as our authorities, and made us believe that the Japanese are nothing but mis-appliers of nonsense held by a few Chinese obtuse poseurs of other times.
I faced a hostile audience and walked out with an ovation. The Japanese supported me on every detail, down to the finest point. Of course this country is going to continue to accept humbug and nonsense from trade names.
The second event was my exclusion from a study group on Asiatics where I have been an on-the-spot observer. I have pretended to protest and in a way I protest. The serious part here is that I wrote a long letter to a high government official about certain Asian matter on which he is posing as an authority and within a week there was an anti-American outbreak there. This nonsense goes on and I want no more of it because[?]
On the Berkeley Campus they gave me the opposite jolt: “Why, we have been looking all over the world for a man like you.” (I have heard this before too.) But I wish first to complete my “How California Can Help Asia” and then go before these men and present Project Prometheus, because otherwise I would get a good job in a country I do not wish to like and the whole thing will dead end.
SWEET POTATO RESEARCH. This is one item which I am offering here as the result of scientific integration. I made a complete report on the methodology of some experiments there, which also offers objectively some material to resolve the very incomplete Mendelian and Lysenko hypotheses. The data when I left proved experimentally the international view point both in the techniques and the logistics to be applied.
I have a completely different reason for writing. After doing the work which I have assigned myself, I am to write a book on “Leaves.” I have found that the leaves of the Sweet Potato are edible, that they contain a high degree of Protein as well as Celluloses, etc. and the combination of the Tubers and leaves may mean an almost complete food, especially under controlled fertilization.
I am going to take this update Davis and also try to present the Integrational Method there. As I am going to two or three other Agricultural Research Stations before the end of the month, it is a comparatively easy task.
The hard part of my life is that I get no support from outside sources whatsoever and do everything on my own. I do not wish to have a well paying job (such as the one proposed on the Berkeley Campus) because this would be self-defeating. I saw the integration of scientific research in Egypt and I have seen its absence elsewhere resulting in the non- solution of problems or tremendous expense in duplicating equipment without duplicating results, etc.
I have already gotten a faint picture of waste due to absence of an international outlook in Algaeology, Soil Therapeutics, Plant Diseases, and Salinity. I am going ahead with the last. My reports are accepted in Pakistan and I think, after my next visit to Riverside, they will be accepted here. Or more, because my chief instructor in Soil Chemistry is now the top adviser for Riverside County and the whole desert area. I am going there soon (whether I see Vocha is enigmatic as I am not sure of my own schedule.)
But to come back. The meeting with this man Aaron may interest you. I glanced at some of his papers and discussed my relations with Von Reichenbach and Keyser—very good from his point of view. The question is, how far can he accept—and others accept an Integrational view—the Indian word is Darshan and your old professor has accepted it.
Will phone after return from Sacramento.
Cordially,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
[undated]
Dear Sam:
Assume you’re back from a good trip East...
Vocha undoubtedly will be informative and interesting. She’ll be in San Francisco a couple days only.
Lloyd
A Unique Opportunity
An Afternoon on and about Alfred Korzybski by Vocha Fiske.
For those to whom Alfred Korzybski is only a name and in some instances a mere myth, this afternoon should prove to be an unforgettable experience.
It is now thirty years since the publication of Korzybski’s Science and Sanity. Vocha Fiske shared various experiences with him and will relate some anecdotes of the years in which he barnstormed America. She brought him to los Angeles to give seminars in both 1935 and 1939. In 1947 he asked her to become a staff member of his annual seminar-workshop at the Institute of General Semantics, giving a special unit in the study of Science and Sanity.
During her colorful career Vocha Fiske toured as a stock company actress, directed a speech orchestra in [the] Hollywood Bowl, directed plays, gave courses in general semantics to radio and television executives, and taught speech, drama, and related subjects in several colleges. For most of the past ten years Miss Fiske has been living “quietly” in Apple Valley. She has made a one-sentence summary of every paragraph in S&S, with assistance in Part III from her husband, Harry L.B. White, of the NASA, Flight Research center, Edwards Air Force Base.
This unique afternoon will be
Sunday, August 23, 1964, 2 to 7 p.m.. It will take place in the home of Lloyd and Mary Morain, 1274 Filbert St., San Francisco, (on Russian Hill, between Hyde and Larkin).
The Fee is $7.50. Enrollment is limited and on a first reserved basis. Please write the Morains no later than August 19.
Lloyd L. Morain
Personal Business Advisor
156 Montgomery St
San Francisco 4, Calif
Yukon 6-4885
September 2, 1964
Dear Sam:
It’s been very good of you to pass along several carbons of interesting letters you’ve written to mutual friends.
Letter writing with you is not a lost art. You have the knack of giving content, which is more than most of us do nowadays when we set key to paper or pen to sheet.
I hope very much that your personal appraisal of yourself and activities is somewhat related to the territory. Some of your past statements such as “I am now accepted by the State Department” or “I am lecturing at Harvard” etc., etc., are quite enough to put off some of your correspondents from taking you seriously.... It would be less embarrassing for some of us,—and I would think you too—if you omitted these frequent claims and self adulations which are so often but little other than sounds that please yourself.
The needs in the food world, and the needs in bringing thinking together and upward are in themselves pressing in the utmost. You seem to be working at these and allied vital problems and may your endeavors come to more than even you envision.
He who generates real light need have no fear that it won’t be seen.
Again Sam, thanks for thinking of us and keep up your important and perhaps crucial endeavors.
Ever,
Lloyd
March 17th, 1965
156 Montgomery Street
San Francisco 4, Calif.
Mr. Sam Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco 3, California
Dear Sam:
Your letters and copies of letters to Reiser continue to be read with the greatest of interest. I Still think it’s a good idea to get together some evening and allow me (and possibly Mary too) the opportunity of picking your brains.
The need to increase food production is so acute that these of you who have workable suggestions must be paid heed. The way I see it is that no matter how successful efforts are to decrease the rate of fertility, measures greater than those now employed will have to be instigated to cope with the pressures for food.
Yes, Let’s get together soon and maybe we can cover more ground that way than through writing. A letter recently in hand from Vocha indicates she is back in reasonably good health and has postponed her trip to Japan until the Fall.
As for a picture of Hugo on his bier, well, far be it from me to turn down such a gift.
Incidentally, I am not at all happy with the way you speak of the two worlds. Snow’s analysis seems to me to have become one more useless bit of prattle. As for Prometheus, however, that is another matter.
Yours, for now,
Lloyd
October 13,1965
Lloyd L. Morain
Personal Business Advisor
156 Montgomery St.
San Francisco 4, California
Yukon 6-4885
Mr. Sam L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco 3, California
Dear Sam:
Many thanks for your recent communications, including the one on “Conservation and the Reversal of Processes.” At least you are having the satisfaction of having some of your ideas gaining currency in isolated places.
How is your book coming along? I hope it contains enough practical “how-to” information to actually help the people of Southeast Asia.
Mary and I have found ourselves having to be out of town more than usual of late and our San Francisco activities, such as seeing friends, has just about disappeared. We do, of course, think of you and others. In Rome a few weeks ago, Mary went over to the FAO and I recalled some of your observations.
It is good to think that Zafrullah Khan has given some recognition to your work. At the time of the United World Federalists’ meeting he came to the house along with some others for dinner, but I was so preoccupied with kitchen activities and drink-serving, etc., that we did not have a real conversation. Needless to say he did not take an alcoholic beverage.
Again, Sam, more power to your efforts. Authentic individualists and useful unicorns have wider pasture than ever before.
Yours, on the run
Lloyd
Lloyd L. Morain
Lloyd L. Morain
Personal Business Advisor
156 Montgomery St.
San Francisco, Calif 94104
January 19, 1966
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco, California
Dear Sam:
The number and varieties of your letters is somewhat overwhelming. As your know I am keeping them for they are unique in many many ways.
Your frequent reference to the two cultures seems to me less useful or functional and perhaps more confusing than is generally accepted. As we look about us in the world, the distinction is hardly one between scientific on the one side and humanist-literary on the other.
Personally, I tend to think of society at large in at least three different frameworks. There’s the level of folk thought or one might say common sense thinking. Here we have matters interpreted in ways that are obvious to the untutored or unsophisticated mind. Examples of this would be that machines such as airplanes couldn’t fly because they are heavier than air or that the world is flat, as anyone can see, or that people of different skins are obviously very different. Somewhat different from this way of looking at things is a kind of literary or figurative or interpretive way of going about the world. In the interpretive world, we form judgments and conclusions based on a reasoning process. We carry forward Aristotelian kind of thinking and of course practically all literature and writing fits into this category. Somewhat different and separate is scientific thinking. Here matters are not obvious and have to be arrived at through the use of tools of one kind or another or techniques, not basically dependent upon sensory experience. To decide that the world is becoming populated at too great a rate is certainly not based on sensory experience. In brief, Sam, I rather feel that C.P. Snow and your two categories are too limited, For me a three part scheme is more convenient.
Let’s keep in touch.
Yours,
Lloyd
June 13, 1966
Lloyd L. Morain
Personal Business Advisor
156 Montgomery St.
San Francisco. Calif. 94104
Dear Sam:
Your contribution at our discussion with Reiser was both welcome and appropriate. It never occurred to me that you may have felt you were too vehement. You were a gentlemanly gentleman although I suppose most gentlemanly gentlemen aren’t expected to have ideas.
Thanks also for the far-out enclosure from Tucson. Trust you too feel stimulated by Reiser’s visit.
Hurriedly,
Lloyd L. Morain
Lloyd L. Morain
June 17, 1966
Dear Sam:
Say, what do you mean, “Please bear in mind I know at least three explanations of the phenomena reported.” What are they? I’ve my own ideas, incidentally but would like your more thorough and sophisticated ones.
Herewith returning Vocha’s note.
Thanks,
Lloyd
Lloyd L. Morain
March 7, 1967
Dear Sam:
I’ve just reread your letters of the 2nd (one being a thoughtful copy of a letter to Reiser). Thanks.
Do I understand correctly that Julie Medlock is hereabouts? I’d like to meet her.
Apparently you’re still having difficulties finding publishers for some articles. Please send me the ones that have been rejected by ETC and I’ll take on the matter from there. Several of the editorial staff read each of the manuscripts and I can arrange to be one of the readers.
Hurriedly,
Lloyd
Lloyd L. Morain
May 3, 1968
Dear Sam:
Mary and I are going to arrange a couple different events for discussion with the Reisers.
The dates will fall within May 20-22. The nature of what will be arranged will depend in part on the response to the cards. Enclosed are about 20 which you might care to distribute.
Hurriedly,
Lloyd
Lloyd L. Morain
June 28, 1968
Dear Sam,
You are much too prolific for me, although I’m glad to add your letters to my file of Lewisania.
Your article on “The Hippie Problem” has been forwarded to ETC. where it will receive readings by two or more members of the editorial staff. In case you are unaware of this procedure of magazines, allow me to assure you that it is standard practice.
I’m glad you’re continuing to receive world-wide acceptance, etc., etc. Could you please send me reprints or references to your two papers which you say “were accepted by two respectable universities”. I need to add them to my file bulging with your triumphs.
Hurriedly,
Lloyd
P.S. During the next week I will be out of the area most of the time having to attend, at least in part, to a number of rather down-to-earth and largely non-verbal activities.
cc: S.I. Hayakawa
June 29, 1968
My dear Lloyd:
Thank you for your letter of the 28th. I know what the standard practice of magazines is. I saw exactly what happened before with John Kiel and I am quite willing to accept this again, quite willing. It will open the door to some independent action, not thinking.
People who have not read Einstein in toto or Darwin in toto or laboratory notebooks of some of our great scientists, seem to want short-cuts. Rigorous thinking requires rigor and neither brevity nor longevity. I certainly do not demand that others accept Farraday’s methodology, verbal or non-verbal.
Certainly I have a non-verbal “solution” for the Hippie-problem and am demonstrating it. Certainly if “case-histories” were wanted I could give them.
As you will be away I am sending copy of this to Don. But I am now quoting—is it verbal or non-verbal?—“Science and Sanity” (which does not appear to be a monument of brevity):
“Infantile exhibitionism leads, also, very often to a selection of a career. Most diplomats, politicians, professional military men, preachers, actors, boxers wrestlers, athletes, many lawyers, and public speakers, to list only the more important professions, select their professions because of this infantile tendency.” Page 521”Science and Sanity,” 4th edition.
We differed and you only were permitted the floor on Snow’s “The Two Cultures.” You have a perfect right to reject Korzybski a la Lewis, but you are not going to prohibit Sam from quoting A.K.—and no comment is necessary and I am not going to give any prestige data. A thing is “true” or “untrue” on some intrinsic merit.
I quote further—and it will be in my “the General Semantics of General Semantics” on the same page:
“We should notice that whole ‘philosophies’ such as theism, the older ontology, teleology, materialism, solipsism, the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of selfishness, and different military and commercial philosophies, clearly display these infantile characteristics.”
Do they?
Finally I am going to quote the paragraph without comment which appears at the bottom page 521 this edition, and goes over to page 522:
“The future war will, perhaps, automatically bring these problems to foreground. It will be an extremely devastating (and less picturesque) aerial war, in which women and children will not be spared. Then, perhaps, some of these infantile women will begin to face m.o. Reality, and so help to start a new era of human adulthood. Men will always depend in their standards on the wishes of women.”
This is A.K., not Sam.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
cc-Hayakawa
[postcard]
July 17, 1968
Dear Sam,
Still in Cambridge and enjoying New England despite some humid days... About 3 weeks ago I ordered a copy of Bachelard’s “the Philosophy of No” for you and trust that by now it has reached you. Also sent a few other individuals copies.
Warmly,
Lloyd
August 13, 1968
San Francisco
Dear Sam,
Many letters from you were here to greet me upon my return Sunday from five weeks in the East. Many thanks for thinking of me in this way.
I’m glad your life-space is so nearly as you wish. You certainly have a wonderful capacity to think and to forge ahead.
If I interpreted correctly there is a possibility that Vocha will be up this way. If so, I hope you’ll let me know, and if there’s some way of helping to add to the success of her trip so much the better. Vocha’s a fine person and exciting teacher. Very glad that you’re keeping Glory Roads in mind. It was one of the most interesting books I ever read. My copy is still at my mother’s in L.A., I think. (You may recall giving a couple lectures there in about 1938.)
On the wing, Lloyd
P.S. Regards to Ed “Pat.”
410 Precita
San Francisco 94110
March 6, 1969
Lloyd Morain
156 Montgomery
San Francisco 94104
My dear Lloyd:
There is the policy of “negotiation from a position of strength.” You will find carbon of a letter written to Art Hoppe. I am no longer in the slightest concerned with the presumably personality emotional appeals, stemming from those who themselves will not accept appeals from others. The day is long past when a person can be met by value judgments and the unfortunate standards used by those persons who have inherited culture patterns such as “General Semantics.”
As I do not believe that the ISGS movement in is in the hands of persons who have any moral standard or believe in Emerson’s “Compensation” or anything like that, I am acting.
It is most unfortunate that we could not have been friends, agreeing, in theory, in a number of different areas. I am no longer appealing to senior citizens of any kind. I am going before the young who have open ears, as well as open minds and hearts, and succeeding. I believe that ultimately there will be a semantic movement which will give the world positive non-Aristotelian systems of thought, both in its depth and in its actions.
You ought to be among the first to uphold the principle that “words are not the things that they represent.” It is very easy for your colleague to infringe on every principle coming from Alfred Korzybski and Cassius Keyser, the friend and mentor of A.K. Today, I am having the audiences and an ever-growing influence based, I hope, on honesty, integrity and sincerity. These are not qualities found in the personality and career of your colleague, now so much in the public limelight.
I consider his presumption in making himself a leader one of the most anti-intellectual steps in the whole history of education. There is no trying to appeal to people who demand the right to speak and abrogate to themselves the refusal to listen. I would like to see some evidence that your colleague is in any respect different from Mao Se Tung.
Sincerely,
S.A.M.
Samuel L. Lewis
S.A.M.
American Humanist Association
April 10, 1969
Report and Appeal
Dear Fellow Humanist,
The youth unable to find a job upon high school graduation, the individual frustrated by the slowness of social reforms and the ineffectiveness of organized humanism, the senior citizen dying of loneliness in a convalescent home, the humanist trying to build a personal philosophy consistent with scientific knowledge and wisdom, the small nation trying to develop without a broad economic base of resources, all have much in common. They exist in a world whose institutions lag behind knowledge, whose social structures and habits discourage innovation as well as warm human concern. Humanists know that there are rational ways between traditional do-nothingism and anarchy. We know that humans by and large are better than their institutions. It is here, therefore, in this world in which widespread seeds of humanization are sprouting that we see vast needs and opportunities for individual and group participation.
Together with our kind of people, humans whom we can respect and be stimulated by, we can find meaningfulness in cooperative endeavors and find increasing satisfaction in achievement. The American Humanist Association is meant to serve you by advancing your efforts toward significant personal and social ends.
As your new President I hope to assist in effecting the changes which you desire, as well as buttressing ongoing programs. The Humanist is consciously aiming to become a more significant voice of the broad humanist movement. The Council for Humanist and Ethical Concerns is facing up to the rights of individuals and legislative changes. The Division of Humanist Involvement, under Bette Chambers, is being muscled up to cope more effectively with social and legislative reforms. A Division of Humanist Service, with concern for personal action on the individual level, is in process of formation. The Humanist Institute of San Francisco, with its emphasis on inter-personal involvement, has the full-time services of Tolbert McCarroll, whose contract as Executive Director of the AHA has not been renewed. Humanist House will again become the coordinating center for the broad human spectrum of our movement. Practical efforts to overhaul the By-Laws and democratize the Association are being spear-headed by our new Secretary, Harvey Lebrun. HSUNA will be encouraged to become an interpreter and trend-setter on the student scene. Chapters and informal groups will be offered incisive programs. Mini-confabs in the realms of personal and social concerns, involving the participation of adventuresome members and as-yet undeclared humanists, will be initiated. A speaker’s bureau is being set up. The Pittsburgh Community is planning for the Association’s annual conference to take place in the fall with the experimental form of awakening latent humanists to the humanist alternative.
Member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union
Humanist House. 125 El Camino del Mar, San Francisco. California 94121 (415) 221-8642
Alas, this must also be a fund-raising letter. Ordinary people are said not to give money around tax time. So, we have to face it, some of us will have to wait until another pay-day before replying. Alex Hershaft is now holding our financial reins and there will be no repetition of last year, in which expenditures were some $50,000 greater than Association income. However, the Association’s cupboard in now not only bare, but is filled with bills, with the Association’s current liabilities exceeding assets. It is hardly enough at the moment to say that our assets are ourselves, scientific knowledge, and the opportunities ahead. Money has to come in. If you don’t wish to make it $5, how about $50? Our Association’s creaking joints have to be oiled. Give it a chance. you cared enough to vote in a new slate, and time will be required for many things, time which has to be paid for in cold hard cash.
Let us hear from you.
Warmly,
Lloyd L. Morain
Lloyd L. Morain, President
P.S. Your tax deductible check can be made out to the American Humanist Association.
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco 94110
April 25, 1969
Mr. Lloyd Morain
American Humanist Association
Humanist House
125 El Camino Del Mar
San Francisco 94121
I am writing to you on behalf of my principal, Mr. Samuel L. Lewis, who is a member of the American Humanist Association. Mr. Lewis is in full accord with your verbal, aims, but unlike the people who use words he is very busy doing exactly what you are writing about.
We hope you mean what you say in, “Together with our kind of people, humans whom we can respect and be stimulated by, we can find meaningfulness in cooperative endeavors and find increasing satisfaction in achievement.” We also hope you mean what you say: “. . .the humanist trying to build a personal philosophy consistent with scientific knowledge...”
A number of years ago “Silent Spring,” a very controversial book, was published. Mr. Lewis had been a professional spray operator, yet when he dared to enunciate an opinion you called him to task publicly. He wants to know if the Humanist’s Society under your presidency is trying to build “ a personal philosophy consistent with scientific knowledge,” or not?
I must call to your attention that in the 11 April issue of Science which we assume belongs to the category of scientific knowledge, there is a long report on “Pest Control,” page 203; this report contains a program entirely harmonious to Mr. Lewis’ research in this field. He is wondering therefore whether you have changed your attitude, and whether in the Humanist’s organization he will be permitted to express himself as a human being, free from the derogatory remarks with which you and your colleagues have greeted him only too many times in the past.
Yes, your appeal is marvelous. There is a large and growing number of young people who would fully accord with the aims and efforts of the American Humanist’s Association, apparently with your personal aims and wishes.
A person who is always derided in public can hardly send a contribution. It is not necessary to send any apologies, but neither can fir. Lewis contribute financially to those who refuse to accept him seriously in intellectual and scientific matters.
Faithfully,
Mansur Johnson
June 19, 1969
Novato, California 94947
Mr. Lloyd Morain
156 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, Calif. 94104
My dear Lloyd:
One does not know whether to be forthright or diplomatic but a Humanism which excludes human beings, and for that matter the majority of the human race is, to say the least a rediction ad absurdum. The hard, hard fact that Sam Lewis is accomplishing what the Humanist Society is verbally considering is noteworthy. And it is still more noteworthy that people who call themselves “semanticists” are not particularly different from people who call themselves “Christians” or “Buddhists” in regarding the following the injunctions of their Principal.
From the standpoint of cosmic evolution I do not hold it is necessary to adhere rigidly to any Principal but I have no right to impose cosmic evolution on any group, least of all theologians and humanists who self-place themselves above the “mob”, themselves thus forming their own separative mob.
After writing Vocha yesterday and reading the paper today I have outline: General Semantics Versus Generals’ Semantics’ and there is nothing you can do excepting join the human race. It will be an easy matter, an absurdly easy matter to join that to get into the humanist or “generals” elite one has to be somebody and if one is not that somebody he is subject to heresy charges exactly as in the religions which you claim to deplore. Claim. Claim, while following the same psychologics. You have to prove by human example and I am neither expecting nor demanding.
The hard, hard fact Lloyd that the campaign to become a Pied Piper has “failed miserably”—only the young showing up and more and more all the time. And with some editors listening, and others respecting the possibility of a publication is simple. Why even Playboy published my letter to them, a courtesy which has never been encountered with Generals’ Semanticists or so-called “Humanists.”
There is still the strife over DDT. I had hoped, as a bona fide disciple and student of Cassius Keyser to see an impersonal debate, following the general principles of actual scientists, to determine the positive and negative aspects of the controversial subject. But I am reminded of Lord Russell who wrote that when the Roman Empire was in danger the Church was concerned with the virginity of maidens.
I had hoped to see a G.S. Or some other society actually debate such subjects as DDT, and with it “Silent Spring;” “Does Tobacco cause Cancer; is it a major cause, why?”; “Possible Solutions to the Vietnam Impasse;” “Food Problems of the World;” and with that “Desert Reclamation;” “the pros and cons of Salt-Water conversion;” etc. Those are real subjects warranting serious consideration by real thinking people, or persons.
Now you, or rather ETC. is considering straightening out the “thinking” of little children. Just like the “churches” keep them in line. “Big People” are too important to consider, and noblesse oblige is accepted alike by the churches and the anti-church people. They agree on noblesse oblige. So do a lot of other non-scientific groups, in all directions.
No doubt you will agree with your art editor that this person has not always crossed his I’s or dotted his T’s correctly so any contribution must be rejected. But this is a new age, Lloyd, in which human beings constitute humanity and in which any system of logistics or psychologics is applied impersonally and universally.
I shall be glad to find your reactions when “General semantics versus Generals’ Semantics” is published. Or beforehand. I am not fooling. I can now easily go back to Cassius Keyser or forward with Professor Bahm, one of Oliver Reiser’s colleagues and perhaps will do both.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
Lloyd L. Morain
156 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, Calif. 94104
June 20, 1969
Dear Sam,
Many thanks for your various letters, including copies of ones to Vocha. She surely enjoyed her stay with you, and her travel plans are wondrous indeed. A couple aspects of your letters of late aren’t clear.
Do you have a specific manuscript on the spray matter or any other? If so, have you sent it to ETC.? If you haven’t, and have an article, send it along to me. I could not guarantee publication, for as with any other article, several people read the manuscripts and independently of each other make their recommendations. More manuscripts are received than are published. I rather doubt that personalities have very much to do with what articles are published.
Somewhere you mentioned Vocha saying I was in charge of publication for ISGS. Being in charge doesn’t mean that I’m a dictator. Also, my function as chairman of the Publications Committee does not include ETC. To date we have stuck to book-length manuscripts.
Please send me copies of your articles as they appear in various publications.
Yours,
Lloyd
June 25, 1969
My dear Lloyd:
The hopes that Luther Whiteman and I had for the use of “Science and Sanity” to help solve or obviate great problems has long since been dashed. Problems are not solved, they are resolved and they are resolved according to the importance of the persons entangled in them. And if you don’t believe me all you have to do is to read the latest copy of ETC., your own publication.
There are now possibilities that this person also may have his own publication—it is a matter of indifference—and there will be some observations of some really big problems of the objective world, the world outside our skins, and these may be faced by a combination or integration of the outlooks of Keyser, Korzybski, Reiser, Lord Snow and perhaps Spengler and Toynbee.
Because the “generals” are at war with each other, abandoning all forms of logic and logistics, it will be a comparatively easy job to get out a paper or more than a paper applying some of the proffered solutions for which the men quoted may have been pioneers.
There is a vast difference between the literary-humanist use of the terms “science” and “scientist” and that found, let us say, in “SCIENCE,” the organ of the AAAS.
It is very easy to Communicate with a scientist; it is beyond conception to successfully communicate with a “scientist.”
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
June 28, 1969
My dear Lloyd:
In the last meeting with the late Hugo Seelig before he left Santa Barbara for Pismo and his last days, he spent hours discussing you as his greatest failure. I should much rather have discussed problems or philosophy, but I am afraid, that whether you were Hugo’s greatest failure or not (I believe Sanford, the negro, was his greatest failure,) there is one thing you have here in common, the desire to discuss personalities and personalisms rather than face problems objectively remains.
I am no longer asking or seeking. The carbon to Oliver Reiser indicates what I shall do, and perhaps must do, not only to vindicate life but to help humanity rise above some of our present day problems.
For example today the paper says that the Rhine water problem has been solved, Was there ever such a problem? The Hitlerian method of seeking a “Jew” is quite common today—it is tobacco for cancer and DDT for everything until it is proven otherwise. “Drugs” lead to addiction; “drugs” lead to the death of animals; “drugs” this and “drugs” that and the Generals of Semantics join with everybody else in not facing the clear logic of the confusion of type as pointed out by Lord Russell.
A real quasi-scientific Semantics is needed and with the fracas in ETC.—only a Ph.D. is permitted to speak in a so-called “democracy”—the door is wide open for some honest-objective discussions beyond the elementary level.
Of course you agree that peasants must obey traffic-laws.
I am not angry with anybody. The young are coming to me in ever greater numbers. But don’t let facts disturb you. Unwittingly my name and work got out in New York and Colorado and I am now able to pull a big one at Harvard—that will be something but the doors are all open.
And with the possible pulling of Don Hayakawa into politics some things will have to get out and he can continue to waste-basket things sent him but you can no longer pull anything in public on me. I have written and will write more to Entomologists on DDT, etc. which I have both used and seen used on a larger scale than you can conceive and I mean just that.
Sometimes one has to agree with the Danish folk-lore story:
“Money can buy anything.” One should much rather have seen an impersonal and really scientific logic hold forth. I believe that day is coming.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
cc-Joyner
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
June 30, 1969
Mr. Lloyd Morain,
156 Montgomery St.
San Francisco, Calif. 94104
My dear Lloyd:
With the writing of a presumably whimsical letter to Arthur Hoppe of the Chronicle, the slate is now clear for an article, or more than an article on the subject of General Semantics, stemming from my earlier work with and under the late Cassius Keyser of Columbia. I am not expecting any recognition of this and this non-recognition gives anything I write more validity. Very sadly, for sooner or later the method of a priori judgment and rejection and the non-laboratory “science” (whatever that means) will become a matter of derision, for there is no alternative.
One of my disciples is now studying Booleian Algebra, advocated by Alfred Korzybski but not part of the disciplines needed to become a “General of Semantics.” Quite the contrary.
In looking over the current issue of ETC. one finds Earl C. Kelley saying (page 9): “The psychological self has boundaries.” Whether this statement is true or not, this at once establishes a metaphysical base, or an acceptance of metaphysics rather than “science.” His following statement is “These are invisible, as all of the psychological self is.” If this is not metaphysics I do not know what is.
But it is the gap between General Rapoport and Allen Walker Read’s rejoinder that is most interesting. Read states: “Rapoport asks that the applications of general semantics should provide direct solutions of the great problems of the day.” So, there has never been any permission or acceptance from this person that G.S. just might be used to clarify some of the items of the Lynsenko-Mendel dispute; the hassle over “sprays,” or any of the important problems of the day. Including Vietnam where everybody is taken into account excepting the actual feelings and actual views of the actual persons concerned.
Truth may or may not be objective and impersonal but I have failed to see where problems are “solved” because of the importance of the speakers or writers concerned. I realize you have never read the press notices concerning Charles Darwin and the controversies which were raised over him! He went with the wrong people!
As an editor has already accepted anything which may come from me on the efforts to face, if not solve problems, and the personality-attitude of your associates and yourself, “it is, of course my duty to mankind” (!) to clarify this situation.
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
September 25, 1969
My dear Lloyd:
One is no longer concerned with your opinions or reactions because too many times you have either called me down in public or permitted others to do so. And circumstances have opened the doors so that an editor has promised to publish:
GENERAL SEMATICS vs. GENERAL’S semANTICS
I am safe because there will immediately be an attack on the personality proving the very theme that is going to be published. No doubt there are persons more capable than others in pointing out the foibles of the unimportant. They do not have to be psychiatrists or even professional people and they may be entirely right in their criticisms. This also proves the point that in academic circles semantics is known today as a splendid system for correcting the language (but not the linguistics) of unimportant people and unimportant subjects.
Great questions which years ago Luther Whiteman and I felt could be clarified if not solved by G.S. are untouched and apparently ETC. is the last place to turn. And ever since the Departments of Entomology and Plant Protection expressed themselves so favorably on my essay on D.D.T. which you egotistically snubbed, I feel it is time to go into action.
We cannot afford to have in high office your colleague who is adept at finding the faults of others. And even more adept in setting up his own S.Rs. which according to my theme, are the private privileges of “semantic-generals.” I wish this were not so, but I am too old and have been spurned too many times not to essay a real come back. And having today those grand “virtues” of some financial stability and some prestige in some places, I can do so.
As now operated ETC. is the last place where any Columbus or Faraday or Whitman could go. Let it be so. Therefore you cannot legitimately complain if one turns elsewhere and if anti-Aristotelianism opens the doors to sophistry and closes them to the principles of Peirue and Keyser and other Americans.
I am now ready to write and it will be read by thousands, to say the very least. This is most unfortunate but you have left no other recourse to
Yours sincerely
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
September 30, 1969
My dear Lloyd:
I have your postal card regarding your change of address. I wish you had not written it. As a “general” of the philosophy that theoretically holds that words are not things, but permits certain very privileged persons to use, or misuse words all they want it is most unfortunate.
I have a private philosophy, Lloyd. Years and years ago you listened to it in Hollywood. But since you have grown to maturity and prominence, it is different and I do not recall a single instance when you have invited me to speak of my own self for my own self, either on my private philosophy or on accumulated knowledges.
All these accumulated knowledges close to the teachings of Keyser and Korzybski have now been accepted in other places, and even some items published. Locally I am meeting more and more people, having more and more audiences and received more and more respect, a respect to the personality because of accumulated knowledges.
Owing to the present scene with the possibility of your fellow-general being named for high office I own it as a duty to myself and my country to see that such persons are not permitted to reach such places. I have been balled-out in public for quoting A.K in private letters to “generals” who admit publicly they don’t understand the language. So be it.
There are more and more calls for honest and objective philosophical movements and your groups are not among those invited. This may be unfair but it is no more unfair than the value-judgment complex which passes as “General Semantics” and which I call “General’s semANTICS” Why your colleague opposes psychedelics and a friend of mine has sold the very articles he derides to the son!
I have long abandoned any attempt at real friendship. One is being received with cordiality on one campus after another and by one group of young people after another. And real scientists have written in praise of articles from this person you and your colleagues have spurned.
Of course with your HUmanist Movement and your Semantic movement you might just accept some properly annotated paper or even permit a lecture. WORDS ARE NOT THINGS—or I am fool enough to believe what others just pretend to believe in. But I am invited to take part in some high level international conferences next year and my efforts are toward that end, and also to and for the real young of this district who listen and want more from
Yours Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
October 2, 1969
Mr. Lloyd Morain
1274 Filbert St.,
San Francisco, Calif.
My Dear Lloyd:
I don’t think you will understand this at all. I had hoped that the Society for General Semantics would offer a forum for the discussion of scientific problems such as the difference between the Mendel and Lysenko outlooks; the use of fertilizers; and more especially the pros and cons of methods for pest control. Nothing of the kind has ever occurred and while verbally or egoistically claiming to be “on the side of science” G.S. is now shunned by all the leading philosophers and scientists I know.
At the moment the young people are calling on no more and more and I hardly have time to breathe. But they are especially concerned because I have in the past been a priori rejected and snubbed and turned down for even suggesting anything. And now I am getting laughs when I mention some of the persons who did it, champions of “science,” which seems to mean that they like to use the word.
Now there are campaigns against D.D.T. Nice emotional campaigns led by people who mostly have no knowledge of pest, soil or plant problems. I won’t give the other side. The ”liberals” do not permit any otherside. But what is tragic to me is that there has been no forum wherein sound, or even unsound logistics could be used.
I attended a class at the university and the professor put up on the board a statement of Wittgenstein: “The trouble with logic is that logic considers itself sublime.” But Wittgenstein is a “god” and when a “god” denies his own divinity, where are we to stand? So we are going to have now mob emotionalism and in place of Hitler’s “Jews” all kinds of villains which will be excoriated.
I am quite disqualified to speak on this subject (your conclusion) despite the fact that I have been a professional spray operator with some knowledge of organic chemistry. I have associated with entomologists, etc. all over the world. But apparently G.S. is not for the entomologists, only on the “side” of science!
Dispassionate debates apparently are not wanted and despite Keyser’s “The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking” neither the Humanists or G.S. people are interested in that! But, Lloyd, I no longer stand alone—far from it. I wish you would step your value-judgments and get out of “Humanism” to look at human beings.
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
December 7, 1969
My dear Lloyd:
One is trying, in his own conception of a spirit of fairness (which may not be “fairness” at all) to send you certain carbons. The desk is now clear for “GENRAL SEMANTICS vs. General’s SemANTICS.”
There are some people who believe problems can be solved, should be solved, may be solved. There are others who delight in the easy method of pointing out a “devil,” either in a person, or an institution, and make it appear that if they can only paint the devil black enough the problem is solved. And maybe it is.
But amid the prevailing pessimisms one does not see it and despite the Vice-President and the editors and commentators (but not the participants) one can still find a way to an audience. And I believe that participation, not self-importance, may just lead to solutions of some problems.
I have purchased a few books from the I.S.G.S., including “The Manhood of Humanity” of which I was one of the first readers and I am going carp that Keyser recommended A.K. to me and the public is going to find that out. And I believe that the proper impersonal use of something which resembles “General Semantic”—but no doubt it will have to have another name—can be used to face the problems of the day and some of them anyhow, and lead toward some solutions.
My next job is trying to get Americans to learn a little from some Vietnamese and there the generation gap stands out clearly: the young want to; their divided elders agree that Americans can do anything better than anybody else.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Feb. 7, 1970
Mr. Lloyd Morain
1274 Filbert St.
San Francisco
Dear Lloyd:
With the writing; of this letter comes the end of a long period of darkness to which I hope I don’t have to refer much anymore. I hardly know of a problem which has been solved by emotionalisms or personalities. It is quite comprehensible that Americans should be opposed to De Gaulle who used this methodology simply because to them he was the “wrong person.”
I do not believe the late Alfred Korzybski would have favored this system even with a “right person.” The President is of course using this method to get rid of “pollution,” whatever he means by that. The same is true of real or not so real problems of the day.
I am being summoned to an international peace conference where I shall be permitted to present my views. Other things no doubt will follow. In fact I have been asked to visit so many states, attend so many conferences, etc., it does not look like the same person.
It is unfortunate that brother Lal failed in addressing the Indian students. He made an excellent speech for humanism, a speech quite dissociated with his social pattern of disregarding the personnel of the audience. It is ridiculous to condemn the caste system while considering oneself above the throng. Besides, I personally have found as much or more “caste” in the social customs of this country and others as in India.
I do not know whether it is worthwhile following in the footsteps of Emerson or Keyser, and offering proposals which might solve some of the pressing problems. People are going to be killed and we are going to have more Biafras because doors are not opened to eye-witnesses.
In an hour I shall be leaving for the University of California extension to attend a course on Southeast Asia. The class is composed almost entirely of “Ugly Americans,” people who have lived and I mean lived, in one or more of the nations designated. We have open forums, open discussions, and human consideration hardly found in organizations verbally dedicated to “human consideration.”
The most ugly of all the ugly Americans is the teacher himself. It is most wonderful, it is most honest, it is most satisfactory, and above all, it is most true.
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
910 Railroad Ave.
Novato, Calif. 94947
March 5, 1970
My dear Lloyd:
It now looks as if I will not be pestering you any longer. The doors are opening, some of them very wide.
There is a vast difference between a person being in the wrong and not being able to express himself at all. And there is a vast difference between the verbal consideration of subjects and their actual solution.
I am going to an international peace conference where I shall be permitted to present a program. The program may be worthy or unworthy, but at least I shall be permitted to present it. I am not going to be barred from the floor and then be criticized with pseudo-excuses. My program may be turned down, but at least it will be presented before the ego is turned down.
I am carrying with me an address of Vice President Geary of India. He has come out for humanism. Bravo you will say. But his humanism includes a far greater sector of the human race than is permitted the floor even in our most democratic institutions outside the scientists, by which I mean the laboratory scientists. I am not going to try to convince anybody of the worthiness of Geary’s “humanism,” but at least I shall be permitted the floor to present it. And I am being encouraged. And my ego is not being attacked prior to the presentation of an outlook which might be utilized to bring out better understanding if not peace in this world. As you will note in the letter to Art Hoppe, I am totally opposed to resolutions. Even persons who call themselves semanticists and decry words do not seem to decry resolutions. I am going to speak for humanism which includes humanity, not for some subjective subjectivisms properly verbalized. I do not know when I shall return but now all the rest of the world is opening its doors, and at least like Benjaman Disraeli I shall be permitted to speak before being raked over the coals.
I call your attention to an article in today’s paper, where a scientist, a real scientist, a laboratory scientist, rakes one of the Lord Commentators over the coals. I have always held that the real struggle is between the literati and the scientist, and see no reason to change such a stance. I am neither sorry nor otherwise over the constant refusal to permit me to speak constructively on those subjects on which I have the most backgrounds. But I find this is quite usual all over. If any group has barred me more than the Humanists you can be sure it is the religionists, against whom the Humanists are verbally warring.
Faithfully,
Sam
June 15, 1970
Mr. Lloyd Morain
1274 Filbert
San Francisco 94109
My dear Lloyd:
This is an acknowledgment of your notice regarding charge of address.
Sometimes I am beginning to think of myself as “Mr. Anti-Timon of San Francisco.” My city simply refused to take me seriously; I have ventured far and wide and have been most successful and my city refused to believe it. But my last venture to a real summit peace conference at Geneva was so successful that one does not care anymore. After all, I have hardly ever met a “realist” who could accept reality.
Then fate seems to have stepped in and added to my financial betterment, to my ever-growing contacts with perhaps important people, to my responses from the young (which are tremendous) and just as much ignored as they are tremendous, and to the success of several projects in which I have been involved.
The commune where I am staying has been most successful from every point of view; there is a new type of humanity in the northern Rio Grande. But I am also working on the world scene and sooner or later something is going to come of it. So I am making no efforts to change the opinions or outlooks of people but concentrating rather on the success of the projects in which I am involved.
Best regards to Mary,
Sam
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
October 1, 1970
Mr. Lloyd Morain
1275 Filbert
San Francisco, California
My dear Lloyd:
I am enclosing copy of a letter to Oliver Reiser. There is a New Age in this world, an age in which human beings accept fact rather than fancies. They listen to eyewitnesses of events without berating them in public or in private. Fortunately I have met an editor who wants all my in situ materiel.
You can hardly object if your name is mentioned in my autobiography as a man who has known me for years and has been a champion in a priori rejecting and personality judging without giving one any opportunity to express not his views, but his direct knowledge, laboratory or field. It is too bad, no doubt, that I seem to have resembled your father in some things and am automatically guilty, though I do not know of what. This is not the only such occasion.
It is too bad that Humanism as now organized rejects the vast majority of humans and that the Generals of Semantics ignored A.K. That is their business. I am not going to protest or ask anything anymore.
The new age is quite open to an eye-witness or participant and does not blame him for being where “history is made.” Even the newspapers are publishing about our “impossible” joint Arab-Christian-Israeli dinners and we are doing much more.
You will remain among those of the “I knew him when” whatever that means. I do not know whether there can be any “General Semantics” but there will be non-Aristotelian philosophies which are not merely Sophistries and egocentricities. I do not believe you can understand that and will say no more.
Everywhere else the doors are opening and opening fast. There is a humanism which includes humanity.
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
P.S. My own work is not being presented in one of the departments of the University of California and I also have established a scholarship. Amen.
Dec. 18, 1970
Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Morain
1274 Filbert St.
San Francisco, Ca. 94109
My dear Lloyd and Mary:
This is to acknowledge your season’s greetings.
This year has been one in which one meets more and more people who prefer to know the accounts of eye-witnesses and participants in world events and movements to the opinions of the high and mighty of all ranks. Daring to go to Geneva, totally unknown excepting by those Asians whom practically everybody in this vicinity denied I could possibly know, it proved to be a turning point in my life. And synchronously, my brother left this world endowing me with the great American virtue—I need not mention what that is.
A few years back one had a session with a retired three-star General, a local man and therefore totally unknown here, and we agreed that be would promote his own program for Vietnam and that this person, whom he also cells Sam-yes I have friends who are three-star Generals and higher, would work for Peace in the Near-East. I had the delightful experience of working on a program for the Near East which first Dr. Gunnar Jarring and then his associates said was the best ever encountered. End of subject.
End of subject. One ran into the Judeo-Christian ethic, whatever that is, and got exactly that sort of treatment as one had usually been getting from establishments, but at Geneva either because of sheer exhaustion or because one had some merit, the plan and the personality and especially the personality were accepted. When one returned to San Francisco it inspired enough young people that they began to have affairs where human beings, not leaders, could sit, eat, dance, and no high and mighty dogmatizing them. The program worked. It even got some newspapers and radio stations to accept that one existed.
Now this along with several other projects have resulted in a Bazaar in Sausalito on Sunday, December 20. One will not tell about the other affairs of life. When facts and human beings are accepted, real problems disappear. Why one has even had interviews with top officials of the Associated Press and one of the leading broadcasting chains, and they admit it, that what they are giving the world is hokum. But God help the peasant who dissents. If he relies on revolutionary tactics or on drugs he sooner or later gets recognition. But if he is honest and objective, only laboratory flunkies and the New Age young pay any attention. But a lot of laboratory flunkies (whom the AAAS calls scientists) and the young adventurers come from wealthy and powerful scions.
In the course of our endeavors we ran into the top generalissimo of semantics, and he has given us his major premise:
“My grandfather was an unbeliever, therefore all Asian philosophies are wrong.”
This is a wonderful major premise, and don’t think it will not be made public, unless.. .And don’t think I am fooling; not in the least. Late in January I am going to Arizona at the request of an editor-publisher who wants everything I have; and believe me this major premise is going to be broadcast. (The exceptions seem to have been articles on Asian Philosophy by Westerners who were drunkards, lechers, and promiscuous.) Sam is not fooling. Sam is going to publish this unless there is an apology, and why not.
After all, this publisher is interested because of the long string of a priori rejections by the high and mighty (so-called). I have been going around telling people I have three factors for fame:
a. Being the first simple person in history to have been a guest of honor at the Imperial grounds in Tokyo.
b. A free dinner from the Armenians.
c. 33 rejections of my paper on Vietnamese Buddhism.
But the editor-publisher was amused and delighted at the long string of a priori rejections by the self-important. Yes, I got a certain deflation when two Marin newspapers at long last conceded I was a human being.
I am re-studying Korzybski. I find it simple and delightful. It follows so naturally from what I had studied previously. And I am going to mention also unless there is a correction, that the generals of Semantics and their underlings have refused to recognize my relations with the late Cassius Keyser. Columbia gave me a beautiful welcome there; all departments. The University of California is doing the same.
I believe that AK pointed out many reasonable avenues to the correction of many of the world’s ills. But nowhere did I find that correctives were to come from the importance of personalities asking the suggestion. The grandfather of a well-known instructor was an Oriental who didn’t believe in Oriental philosophy. Therefore all Oriental philosophies are wrong, excepting their modern substitute by drunkards and lechers. Boy, what an article. Can you give me any reason for not writing it?
I am not a verbalist; I believe we can have peace on earth, and even good will. But I want to see problems solved, and if this awkward way is the only method by which it can be achieved. Will do. But if there is another wad please let me know,
Faithfully,
Sam
Samuel L. Lewis
November 13, 1971
Lloyd and Mary Morain
1274 Filbert
San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Morain,
I am returning the correspondence which you loaned to us from your files on our visit there last week. Thank you very much for your generosity on this matter. We also appreciate your willingness to share with us your time and energy through our tape recording sessions.
It was certainly an interesting day we spent with you in your beautiful home. It is always worthwhile to hear different points of view, to get different perspectives, on a subject, and we are grateful to you for sharing with us your points of view on Samuel L. Lewis. It was also gratifying to us to see the genuine interest and elation with which you listened to our own point of view on Murshid (as we knew him.) We may have a transcript made from this tape in the future and if so we will send it to you for your perusal.
Under separate cover I am also sending to you a copy of OMEN Magazine which contains the text of a lecture made by Samuel Lewis. We discussed this last week. One of the remarkable things about this article is that the editor was willing to let the stylistic idiosyncrasies of the speaker be expressed even if to an analytical point of view they might seem to be off the subject. By doing this the flavor of the speech is more fully captured, that perfume of its essence beyond words.
I am sending a copy of this letter to our very dear mutual friend Bryn. It was through his gentle prodding that we asked to do the interview with you. We hope that you will keep us informed if you hear anything of the prospective visit of Hidayat Khan to the Bay Area. Our telephone number is 285-5208; 410 Precita Ave.
I have spoken with Michael Gest who is one of the directors of Hallelujah! The Three Rings. This is a group of young people working for a lasting peace in the Middle East through the application of cross-cultural thinking. Michael is concentrating in the areas of scientific activity and as Mary mentioned her deep interest in UNESCO we thought there might be some overlapping of function that might be profitably discussed. If you are interested in talking with him, he is certainly interested in talking with you, and he feels that in a month or so when certain projects he is working on give him more of a break, the time might be right.
All heart-felt wishes to you both from Peter and myself,
Wali Ali