Dear
Robin
You probably remember when I asked you if you knew
‘why I was doing what I am doing with my life.’ Your response was ‘you have
lost confidence.’ You did say this may be mistaken. However, it seems to me
that you held this view in a more than hypothetical way. I may be mistaken – of
course. However, I think this in part because of the rapidity with which you asserted that the fact that I do not have
American Citizenship as an example of the same thing. Another reason for
thinking that it is more than a hypothesis is what appears to me to be an
emergence in your spoken attitudes in such matters of a consistently negative
slant
Even though you said you were not sure of what you
said, I feel it necessary to respond for a variety of reasons. One is
self-respect. Another is that I do not want to let you think that I am agreeing
with your views. I have no objection in principle to your holding such views
but I do not want you to think that I agree (unless I say so.) I intend to not
get into any debate regarding the issues. However, it is unpleasant for me to
think that you might think that I have any agreement with such interpretations
(or special ability to make such
interpretations) of my life and choices. It is not unacceptable for me for you
to have your views or express them. However, it is unacceptable for me to let you
think that I might agree that you may have some privileged insight into the
issues in question. I think that these assertions may be a good thing for a
healthy relationship between you and me. I also do not want you to think that a
precedent has been set where what I say may be regarded at any time as an
occasion for criticism. Naturally, I cannot prevent you from thinking that such
a precedent has been set but that is my intent. Even though I disagree with
your interpretations they are probably not inconsistent with at least some of
the facts as you know them. That is, ‘loss of confidence’ etc. is a possible
but not a necessary inference from those facts
I do not think of my self as a supremely confident
person. There is a mix of confidence and a lack of it and, when do I act with
confidence I am occasionally surprised because I think of my self as a mix.
However, I do not think there is a loss
of confidence in my ability to find or perform in other positions (or to do
good work.) What I do doubt is that I would sustain interest in work of the
kind in question. One of the reasons that I think that my interest would be
less than it used to be is that I lack the motives to do such work in
engineering. That field has never been a passion for me even though I did
derive enjoyment from some aspects of it. However, I suspect my enjoyment would
be less because I passionately enjoyed my thought and writing over the last
twenty or so years in which the approach may be labeled ‘philosophical’
What you said has, for me, a positive and a negative
outcome. The positive is that I confronted some issues and re-worked other
ones. I addressed the issue of confidence. Such issues are obviously not
altogether simple but the simple version of my response is the one just stated
– I have doubts that I would sustain interest in technical work (I should have
learnt this many years ago at IIT.) My reasons for wanting to get such work lie
in the extrinsic aspects such as money and prestige but not in the work itself.
I am not immune from such considerations or to being affected by the opinions
of others but I am, I think, driven by internal and intrinsic factors to an
extent that is more than typical. There is a balance between the extrinsic
appeal of that kind of work and the intrinsic appeal of what I currently do
which is not the work at mental health but the fact that it allows me to pursue
my interests, my real passion, in a way that was not possible when I was
teaching (I work eight hours a day, I do not take work home.) The situation is
not altogether simple, however, and my perception of the balance is not static.
The balance has been quite delicate and I have often been tempted to
capitulate. However, when I picture myself in what might have been regarded as
the normal career path and imagine how I might feel in having given up my
‘highest ideal and passion’ (see later) I see myself then, in that career mode,
as the intrinsic ‘big loser’ as having had the opportunity to encounter TRUTH but having turned my back on it.
(This does not mean that I think of others, even those with great talent, who
follow established careers, or those who have not had or sought insight into
what truth may be as being in any way less than those who have…) The reworked
issue is thinking through the choices of my life (you may think otherwise but I
hold them to be choices)
The most recent major effect on the balance of
‘imperatives’ was the discovery I made in 2002 and have probably mentioned. It
is, in effect, a system of discoveries with the following characteristics (1)
It provides a foundation for metaphysics (the study of all being) that contains
the seeds of a proof or demonstration that no deeper foundation is possible;
(2) It permits resolution of many fundamental questions or problems such as the
problems of substance and related ontologies including the mind-matter problem,
the status of ‘process’ and ‘relational’ metaphysics, the problem that has been
called the ‘fundamental problem of metaphysics,’ i.e. the question of why there
is being at all instead of an absence of being; (2) It allows demonstration
that any other coherent system of metaphysics is equivalent to it is a
sub-theory; (3) It sets in place a revision of any system of knowledge that is
founded in any lesser metaphysics or is ad hoc; and there is a ‘ripple effect’
into the major disciplines of philosophy such as logic (the implications
include revaluation of the nature of logic and the identities among logic and
metaphysics,) ethics and cosmology (including consequences for the nature of
the universe of all being as a whole, the nature of space and time,) and into a
number of ‘specialized’ disciplines such as physics, biology, psychology and
social theory; and, particularly, it has suggested and required rethinking of
my own system of thought. The form of the original discovery has undergone a
number of transformations and has become clearer in its nature and its
implications since 2002. I was extremely pleased at the original discovery
because it immediately resolved some fundamental questions that I had been
pondering and immediately provided a foundation for some positions that were
necessary to my thought but whose previous foundation had been through
intuition and analogy. I doubt that I would have had the original insight without
pondering being vs. absence of being for a number of years and I am certain
that I would not have realized the breadth of the implications without many
years of study in the variety of disciplines. Anyway, these developments
acquired their own life and force and even now, while I see the ideas as more
or less complete in their broad implications, the problem of how to best
express them remains
The negative outcome is that I feel a sense of loss. I
had assumed that you understood what I have been trying to do and why and that,
in spirit, you supported those efforts and my choices. I now feel, perhaps
mistakenly, that this is not the case. If you were not my brother, if I did not
love you and have regard for you, this would not be important and I would not feel
loss. Among my friends and acquaintances some admire what I am doing and others
think that I’m a ‘big loser.’ I enjoy the appreciation but the negative
reactions do not bother me much. Even your negative interpretation does not
bother me much – in itself. (Perhaps that you make the judgment assumes,
consciously or not, that your life is somehow better than mine. I do not know
whether you have in fact made this judgment but, if so, it is not something
that I accept. I hope you do not think that I am suggesting that my life is in
any way better than yours or that such comparisons interest me.) Instead what I
feel, mostly, is loss – first of support in spirit and second in a feeling of
comfort and sharing regarding that support. Instead, I am beginning to experience
the negative as unpleasant. (I should add that this experience is not a general
one but pertains only to the issues under consideration – issues of life choice
and so on. At the same time it is clear that the issues are not minor.) If the
fact that your interpretations are possible inferences were revelations I might
learn from them but self-analysis is a habit with me and it I have long been
aware of such possible interpretations of my actions dating back to Hazaribagh
(at least.) Perhaps what I perceive as negative has origin in (what I perceive
to be) your greater need, desire, or
dependence regarding what I call the extrinsic factors of work – prestige,
salary and so on and consequently in the implicit or not fully conscious
assumption that I am the same and the then perhaps natural inference that I
have ‘given up.’ I do not know whether this is the case but it would not be
unusual. I also wonder whether there may be some element of competition –
conscious or not fully so. I used to wonder whether such elements entered into
dad’s thinking although in his case I think he was also concerned about what
others thought or might think and the fact that he would like to be proud of
and show off about his sons
But, now that you have said what you have said I
would, upon reflection, if you feel that you have not had a full opportunity to
say what you might have wanted, to invite full comment, so that I can clearly
know what you may have been thinking and where you stand and that, in turn, you
can know where I stand
I think that your response has been doubly
pessimistic. In the first place instead of the question in quotes above your
response was to ‘why am I not doing certain things with / in my life.’ Second, a
number of hypotheses concerning this question are consistent with what you know
of me. Your choice is toward the negative end of the spectrum
Here is my response to the issues raised
My present situation is and continues to be the best
actual solution to my highest ideal in life and to my sense of adventure
I believe that my thought has potential for a huge
contribution to human thought. I believe that, in some significant ways, my
thought has gone beyond anything that I have read and that includes some of the
great thinkers – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Russell and
Wittgenstein. Additionally, the contribution is not limited to topics that have
some relation to ‘philosophy’ and touch also upon physics, psychology and
social theory (at one time almost all intellectual endeavor was part of
philosophy.) Something that you may not recognize is how far I (my thought) has
come, how much the ideas have evolved (especially in the sense of the outcome
not being contained in the beginning,) how much effort it has taken, what I
have sacrificed, how much passion it has involved, and how greatly I have felt
rewarded and exhilarated and how much there have been trials mixed in with the
feelings of reward… My interest does not end with ‘thought’ but extends to
‘action’ and it remains to be seen what I may do in that regard (as described
in the booklet I sent you there are some beginnings regarding ‘action,’
‘experiment,’ and ‘transformation’)
The understanding phase of ‘Journey in Being’ is drawing to a close. What remains is working out
details – applications of the central scheme to particular domains such as
society, religion and faith; writing out the scheme. The next phase, the
‘experiment,’ ‘transformation’ and so on, after having flown at a low level for
many years is, I hope, beginning to take off. What does all this mean? I am not
particularly happy with the booklet that I sent you but it does contain an
explanation. We are quite different in who we are and in our choices. However,
I am with you in spirit in your life. I am glad for your success and
participate in it vicariously. I hope that you participate similarly in my
adventure
You mentioned happiness as one of my possible motives.
There is a difference between wanting to be happy as an explicit, primary or
direct motive and appreciating happiness. And there are differences among
happiness, joy, adventure, passion… To the extent that emotion has driven my
choices I think that adventure and passion have been important. The issue of
happiness arose when mum and dad decided on a number of occasions in my life
and without asking me one question that I must be unhappy. Nothing I said
persuaded them otherwise. But, except for their continuing insistence the issue
of happiness would not have arisen. I do not think that happiness is more or
less important to me than is typical. What might be different is what it takes
for me to be happy and so on. It is important for me to be inner directed, to
work on those issues with which I have passionate concern and (usually) that I
think are ‘important.’ In any case, without going into details of my
motivational system, I do not think that happiness is the primary and direct
motive. This point is somewhat tangential to my reasons for writing this letter
but it may answer questions that you have had. While on the topic I may say
that I think that I am reasonably happy. Working on my
projects (ideas…) makes me happy. Recently, I had worked on the document
automation system that I had mentioned. It was enjoyable but not productive of
real happiness. I suppose that having a girl friend and enjoying the
relationship, would add to my happiness. I enjoy friends but have been
‘sacrificing’ friendship for my ‘passions.’ I like being in ‘nature’ the woods,
under the stars… I think if I were employed in a position where I worked only
on my projects and according to a schedule of my choosing,
I would be in bliss. This is a relatively complete account of my ‘happiness’
system except for one thing. I have had a share of unhappiness (this is not a lament;) and there are stupid things that make me brood at
times (one does not have total choice in one’s original propensities;) yet, I
think I have a talent (and have cultivated this talent) for enjoying situations
small and large and for enjoying life itself
What I said in my recent response to Susan’s email
remains true. I have always loved you and continue to do so. I also want to
say, and should have said so long ago, that I am and will always be grateful to
you and Susan for all that you did for mum and dad
Love,