ENTR’ ACTE
Part III
What Did Dr. J. Allen Hynek Believe About UFOs in 1967: And When Did He Say It? And A Philosophical – Psychological Debate: The Debunkers: And The Telling of the Curious Case Of Moriarty Wild: The Man behind It.
If you missed Part II click here.
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” (Mother Teresa.)
“But everything has its beginnings, and we selectively pick November 24, 1967 when the public and Forteans went to listen to Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s lecture on his investigations into the UFO phenomenon as he spoke at the St. Louis Washington University Graham Chapel (“The UFO As A Scientific Problem”). I had taken note of and later presented his comments in my small fanzine Dissenter/Disinter, also marking Hynek’s comments that he was beginning to suspect that the oddities in that phenomena indicated a metaphysical or psychic aspect in its nature….Wild….shocked me at my front doorstep …saying that I was a ‘liar’….” (Steve Erdmann, Part I). The analysis as to what led a youthful ‘debunker’ to attack an early record of Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s sayings continues…….
Sadly, no apology came from Wild; Wild apparently felt it was his imagined “academic” duty to psychologically assassinate his friends (and I did, somehow, consider him my friend at those moments even though I suspected over the years that his personal attacks had their own peculiarities). Just as the so-called “UFO fanatic-believer fringe” carried oddities, the Debunker Fringe was likewise laden with the same Religious propensities. To quote Eric Hoffer:
“This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength. Though his single-minded dedication is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life to demonstrate to himself and others that such indeed is his role. He sacrifices his life to prove his worth.” (The True Believer, “Fanaticism,” Perennial Library, 1951, p. 80.)
Moriarty Wild seemingly lived in a wondrous world of religious “purity,” or the pretense of doctrinal “purity”: pure lifestyles, pure grammar5 , pure religion, pure jokes, pure remarks, pure 19th/20th century behavior, pure clothing designs, pure ‘thinking’ (claiming, either, atheism or agnosticism, Wild’s avoidance of many things ‘modern’ – such as television, clothing styles, slang, even music and sounds – seemed a blend of “beyond Luddite” at times and extreme Christian Fundamentalism). But, even if an “innocent prodigy,” Wild shouldn’t have been “wrong” in the case of Dr. Hynek (or many other of his perfect, political crusades) — he was not permitted that in what could be called the schizoid “PERFECT WORLD” – – – was that the ‘world’ taught to people in that Secret-Debunker-Finishing-School?6
I recalled Wild going about social and public circles back through years 1967 (circa 60s to the near present), smirking, like some little J.R.R Tolkien hobbit, cackling, usually in whispers: “idiots!” – “you’re a liar!” – “trash!” – “crazy!” – “junk!” – and other symptoms of seeming schizoid Tourette-like coprolalia (normal acid drollery or stereotypic movement disorder? Sometimes a victim of ego-syntonics, Wild said he didn’t remember going about making such remarks).
Paul Braternab spoke out against such philosophical intolerance on January 23, 2012: “The idea of a single scientific method is a myth, and the damaging one at that. As P.B. Medawak pointed out, there are numerous different styles of doing science, although all of them have certain things in common: the interplay of observation, reason, and imagination….and willingness in principle to revise and refine….” Elmer Rich III likewise concluded on January 23: “The scientific method is neither deduction from a set of axioms nor a way of making plausible guesses, but that is a matter of successive approximation to probability distributions.”
Michael Guillen, PH.D., Senior Science editor for ABC-TV had a much more refreshing use of the language (1998): “my goal is to report accurately and open-mindedly any interesting and credible goings-on within science, be they orthodox or iconoclastic….apply the scientific method…only through rigorous studies…can we get beyond the endless and largely emotional- philosophical arguments between ‘skeptics’ and ‘believers’….they’re open as evidenced by the continuing disagreement among intelligent, well-educated people….many of today’s research results….are routinely contradicted by some subsequent study….it’s not the nature of science ever to know anything with absolute certainty. Which is why Mr. Park’s remarkable ability to know exactly what is and isn’t possible, to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science with such complete confidence strike me, well, as just so much voodoo….”
MORE THAN MISGUIDED PHILOSOPHIES
“How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolute enough to mend them.” (Benjamin Franklin.)
Wild’s philosophical misstep is one that is shared by many debunkers around the globe. “Both they who convert and they who are converted need the fervent conviction that the faith they impose or are forced to adopt is the only true one,” said Eric Hoffer (The True Believer, Ibid, p. 99). “Without this conviction, the proselytizing terrorist, if he is not vicious to begin with, is likely to feel a criminal, and the coerced convert see himself as a coward who prostituted his soul to live.”
Over the years, even more-so recently, Wild had aligned himself with Right-wing or Ultra-right-wing causes (because they supposedly preach against poor behavior), and he stayed close to friends or ‘icons’ he deemed sympathetic to those causes and images, often castigating robustly those who disagreed or challenged his Doctrines7.
“The game of history is usually played by the best and worst over the heads of the majority in the middle…they see their lives and the present as spoiled, beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both….,” Eric Hoffer, Ibid, pp. 29-30.
It is important that Wild’s ‘heroes’ had treated him extremely kindly (though that quality is not always, apparently, given to those he disagreed with). Though he has debunked supernatural stories and paranormal phenomena as so much claptrap and malarkey as part of his march towards Truth, he also defended ‘icons’ (not that his friends are not congenial or humane at times) that just happened to be or purported to be Ultra-Christian (and some as technophobic8) because of their stand against the decadence of society. You would think that this would have contradicted his disbelief of the paranormal, in as much as Catholicism and other Christian religions are chuck-full of supernaturalism and the paranormal.
In August 2010, Wild gave a list of characteristics he believed every virtuous human should live by, which should, I suppose, have included him.9 (“Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end….thumbing a ride on any eternal cause that rolls by…he sees in tolerance a sign of weakness, frivolity and ignorance…,” Eric Hoffer, Ibid, p. 83).
And since some of his closest ‘icons’ were purported Christians, you would think that would demand those ‘icons’ to attempt to lead strict Christian lives. They seemingly did not; some aspects were somehow quite pharisaical and questionable. To get even a passing glimpse of what Christ taught and how he lived one should read Jesus: A Biography from a Believer by Paul Johnson (Penguin Group, Harper & Row, 2010): Compassion for the poor and needy was one of His requests. His message was “love” as opposed to militant pharisaic politics.10
(One of the organizations Wild belonged to was a Conservative White Supremist group consisting of fairly educated, professional and congenial people, but they nonetheless were also a potpourri of human oddities and regional peculiarities. Another ufologist was a friend to Wild (though the friend claimed to be in a sober Conservative/Christian stance), Steve Erdmann discovered the friend to have told convincing “tall-tales.” None of the people that Wild spoke about (many that I had known personally) had unencumbered, faultless, innocent lives that I know of, and, usually, upon further examination, made variable errors like all the rest of humanity. Wild had kept himself in a ‘pivotal’ position which seems to accommodate and encompass, both, their faults as well as their positive aspirations.)
I thought sometimes, looking back, that Moriarty took himself far too seriously, that he had turned into a snob of sorts, always on a quest to find enemies that were out to quash his imaginary and weakly constructed style-of-living, however Scrooge-like that might have been at times, even though he was one of us ‘common persons’ after all. It was hard to figure-out all the twists and turns in his mind.11 Having read his past comments on the worthlessness of homeless vagrants in the city, I thought of Wild one freezing, cold night when I comforted a hobo huddled over a window heat vent in 10-degree weather. Would Wild – or even I – be able to necessarily temper continually a fanatical crusade for “justice,” and any attached and dubious icons’ societal disparagements this may entail, when confronted by such hoboes cringing towards a rush of hot air from a window’s air vent?
And what will mankind do for each other when the full effect of the current worldwide 600-trillion-dollar “financial hydrogen bomb” of CDO, derivative, and default swap debt crisis hits “people,” human beings (with many more dropping out of the middle-class): when multitudes of hoboes will appear and seek warmth at “alley window hearths”?
I noticed (in personally sharing personal dementia common to many humans) that one’s “cynicism” (along with one’s cantankerousness) often seemed to increase in one’s philosophical/political repertoire as one grew into old age (and it cannot be denied that one is possessed by personal idiosyncrasies, in as much as this writer even occasionally suffers from glossphobia and post-traumatic stress). However, could particular cynical fanaticism (such as disparagements critical of the lifestyles of hoboes in the city or even humans as a species) also be something born beyond – even if in combination with – camaraderie adjoined to dubious human cynic–heroes or debunker books entirely?
‘DEBUNKING-DEMENTIA’ ALSO LAYS ON THE PERSONALITY SCALE
“We have met the enemy and it is us!” Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1953.
“There is no ‘they’, only ‘us.”’ Anon.
Donald Michael King in the May, 1991 Fate Magazine (Vol. 44, No.5, pp. 5-6) noted that “CSICOP is not for skeptics. It is for debunkers….some members of CSICOP want to be more: they want to be thought police….they want to able to determine what you and I should believe. They want to limit the possibilities that are available to us. This attitude is what I call religious fascism.” This led readers such as Jim Brasfield (Fate Magazine, November, 2006, Vol. 59, No, 11, pp. 84-85) to label such debunking as “the Religion” of debunking: “If a group of people must resort to such disrespectful and groundless attacks in order to protect their ‘religion,’ then looking at others’ sides’ views seems more warranted than ever.”
Noted in a past “I See by the Papers” column in Fate Magazine several years ago that a chemical was medically discovered in the bodies of ‘debunkers’ that might be a clue as to their cynicism. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to locate that item since, in those voluminous pages, but the topic has inspired more discussion and led to more discoveries; recently, moreover, studies on epigenetics [the study of how people’s experiences and environment affect the function of their genes] seemed to indicate that chemical markers set-up a biological competition between maternal and paternal genes leading to impacted behavior at the epigenetic level.
Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Myrna Brain Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, traced a lot of human pessimism to the limbic brain system where there was an overabundance or under-production of neurotransmitters norephrine/noradrenaline in the history of certain individuals.
Another study by British scientists at Essex University, Elaine Fox, and Chris Ashwin, Bath University, explored genetic tests, described in the proceedings of the Royal Society B, that compared short, even or long genes that controlled serotonin in the amygdala of the brain, some variations causing cynicism or pessimism.
Dr. Joseph Depenza, biochemist at Rutger University with a Bachelor of Science Degree, spoke of neuroplasticity and the chemicals involved in brain evolution. Depenza spoke of how the body can be knocked out of homeostasis by stress and other actions and having the Limbic Brian send a flow of peptides creating a neuro-chemical condition in the cerebellum. http://drjoedispenza.com/forum/index.php?topic=100.0.
Norman Doidge/Michael Merzenoch spoke of studies where excessive levels of neuronal growth led to spasticity with tonic paralysis and excessive release of neurotransmitters causing adverse synaptic rewiring which were highly maladaptive. (Chaney, Warren, Dynamic Mind, 2007, Las Vegas, Houghton-Brace Publishing, pp. 33-35, ISBN 0-9793392-0-0. Doidge, Norman (2007), The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the frontiers of Brain Science, New York: Viking, ISBN 9780670038305. Draganski et al, “Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of Brain Structure Changes during Extensive Learning,” The Journal of Neuroscience, June 7, 2006, 26(23):6314-6317. Chaney, Warren, Workbook for a Dynamic Mind, 2006, Las Vegas, Houghton-Brace Publishing, p.44, ISBN 0 0979339219.
[Other laboratory studies indicated a variant of serotonin receptor 2A gene – 5HT1A and 5HT2A – in male carriers of T/T genotype of 5HTR2A (UCL School of Life and Medical Science, 2007). Genotype-phenotype correlations of personality traits revealed that genes determined ‘belligerence’ (bel), ‘cynicism’ (dub), ‘lack of personality’ (dul-1), plus others such As ‘obsessive-compulsive behavior’ (pic-e)]. Additional studies likewise indicated genetic variants for creativity as “optimism,” “wonderment,” etc., as well, and just as equally. There were various chemicals included in these functions: serotonin (mood), norepinephrine (flight or fight), popamine (motivation), glutamate (learning) and others (www.mja.com.au)].
Adam Helfer and the Late Dr. Candace Pert
The Nature versus Nurture arguments concerned how environmental factors could add to altering behavior along with genetic factors (even after the “critical period” of early development), showing the factors involved in plasticity to be flexible, dynamic, and transmutable. (Ponti, Giovanna; Peretto, Paolo; Bonfanti, Luca; Reh, Thomasa [2008]. Personal-Project.org – Annual Review of Psychology, 1995. Science 21, September, 1984).
Sharon Begley commented that humans were “hardwired in their biology” with a Religious Sense as part of their DNA to see the Profound as an “essential dimension” of their brains (but, as in the debunkers case, as the Anthesis against the Thesis). This would seem to have included “debunkers” as well as “believers” (as Eric Hoffer explained in his book on Fanatics, ibid), explaining why even debunkers approached topics so religiously and attempted to find deep meaning and purpose in even their theories (The Mind And The Brain: Neuroplasticity And The Power of the Brain, Harper Books, New York, 2002. Newsweek, November 3, 2008, pp. 56-60).
Recent studies of the neuropeptide vasotocin in zebra finches and vasopressin in mammals showed how animals can be made to be social or anti-social (www.the-scorpion-and-the-frog.blogspot.com/2013/03/social-butterflies-or-wallflowers-two.html. Wednesday, March 14, 2012).
Candice B. Pert, Ph.D., saw this as part of a rational, masculine, materialistic world that placed too much emphasis “on competition and aggression,” awash on peptides of negativism, and an attack on our hypothalamic, pituitary and limbic Cortical Releasing Factors (CRF’s) (Molecules Of Emotion, Scribner Publishers, 1997, pp. 269, 270, 315).
Autism was discovered in combination through environmental causation as “de novo” genetic mutations, some at early embryonic stage of human development and some seemingly spontaeous.
Dr. Evan E. Eichler, professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle and Dr. Mark J. Daly of Harvard.
https://www.autismspeaks.org/scien ce/scien ce-news/top-lists/2011/de-novo-genetic changes-provide-new-clues-autism.
Oregon-based Professor of Sociology and environmental studies, Professor Kari Norgaard, believed she had detected a cultural resistance, an aberrant sociological behavior on the part of debunkers (March 30, 2012,www.prisonplanet.com/climate-change-skepticism-a-sickness-that-must-be-treated).
Such controversies had been played out in the scientific community before, such as the curious case of George R. Price who studied altruism as a genetic link: his Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), also known as Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection and the ‘Hamiltonian spite.’ Price evolved from a comparatively stable atheist to a vagabond hobo Christian trying to prove his equation until the time he died (en.wikipediaz.org/wiki/george-r.-price. http://naturaltruthwordpress.com/2011/05/17/george-r-price-a-tragedy-of-meaning).
VICTIMS OF REALITY
Could those “environmental factors” have involved and included the gossip, family upbringing, organizations, books and novels, and other social and political settings and pressures of “debunkers” and “believers” alike, indicating we are all victims of reality and ‘no one’ can claim a “pure and clean world that each lives in”? Colin Bennett saw these personality traits, these temperaments, in his biography of the late Captain Edward Ruppelt (Flying Saucers Over The White House, Cosimo, Inc., New York, N.Y. 10011, 2010, pp. 40, 41, 44-45, 104, 146 – speaking of the destruction of UFO files by military personnel):
“….whenever these things enter the UFO area, they appear to enter a permanently unstable region where reference, definition and materiality become so doubtful…consists of the kind of Max Escher….behave in a strange way as if they have been switched on by a highly selective impulse, and they do things that they would never do under normal circumstances…implicit, pre-conditioned, almost as if they were some quite automatic function of a bio-electric switch, shutting off certain planes of information within the brain….This is the implicit conspiracy, as distinct from the explicit. We have no problem in admitting that our bodies are robotically programmed, but we have great difficulty….As with many believers, in few sceptics do we find considered intellectual reaction. Rather do we find quite genuine anger and resentment and bitterness as if the phenomenon not only offends them intellectually but also offend some deep, very private thing which they hold dear….human beings have a desperate need to disbelieve, we are forced to consider that all cultures navigate by engineered denials….the ultimate state of the life-long prisoners of the military industrial complex which is Goethe’s Leidstadt, Eliot’s Wasteland, and the corporation rolled into one.”
I personally cannot claim to be above the fray, as do some debunkers, and in admitting inclusion of the same in my mental faculties; I certainly can’t claim to be sinless; I cannot claim perfection; I can only say that I am human.
EPILOGUE
“Strong people welcome new ideas and make them their own, weak people run from new ideas.” (The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-deception in Human Life, Robert Trivers, Perseus Books Group, 2011, p. 315.)
A New Age of Science was upon us (provided we didn’t blow ourselves to bits). There was The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness or the Society for Scientific Exploration; these were a part of a growing number of such avant-garde’ groups consisting of legitimate scientists. I’m not about to call them idiots as Wild would. Wild would call Einstein an idiot, if it served his Religion.
And he might have included Brian Greene, Michio Kakui, Charles Seife, Martin Rees, Marcelo Gleiser, Ralph Alpher, John Wheeler, David Bohm, M. Talbot, Alan Guth, David Gross, Paul J. Steinhardt, Burt Ovrut, Kip Thorne, David Deutsch, Lawrence Kraus, Phil Marshall, Dian Greene, Andrea Ghez, Phil Plait, Max Tegmark, Andrea Ghez, Rita Berabei, Jonathan Butterworth, Joe Silk, Brian Josephson, Frank Tippler, Andrew Cleland, Joan Swartz, Amanda Peet, Michele Thaller, Stanley Love, Geoff Marcy, Hal Levison, Edward Whitten, Joseph Linken, Nick Poplawski, Andre Linde, Frank Wilczek, Peter Higgs, Stephen Hawkings, Phil Rivera, John Jackson, Ray Downing and a whole host of others like them. Might as well, they are pushing the Outer Limits of science and I’m just not prepared to castigate them. Wild can do that. Neither am I able to adjudicate and ostensibly expatriate the fate of Carl Jung or many other scientists. Maybe after I get to attend that Debunker Finishing School which Moriarty Wild attended? However, maybe I can hope and see Magic still going on in the universe. Maybe………….
(“Take a bolt out of the blue….Fate steps in and sees you through…when you wish upon a star your dreams come true….,” On Disney Songs The Satchmo Way, Louis Armstrong, May 16, 1968.)
(“The revolution was entirely inward, a revolution against selfishness and greed, cruelty and prejudice, anger and lust: a revolution from self-love into love for all and fellowship with everyone.” (Jesus: A Biography From A Believer, Paul Johnson, Viking Penguin, Penguin Group, Inc., p. 160. 2010.)
FOUND DOCUMENT
Regrouping and salvaging a damaged storage garage in 2013, Steve Erdmann came upon some sketchy notes from the 1967 Hynek lecture, and while the note was not a verbatim quote and only a paraphrase of Hynek’s comments, it did indicate the direction and sympathy of Hynek’s beliefs (Erdmann’s comments later in the Dissenter/Disinter Magazine were further based on extended memory), as follows:
“(UFOs concern) things in physics right around us….phenomena which is beyond our understanding, yet will (eventually) be natural.”
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Those wishing to reach Steve Erdmann can write the editor of this magazine or contact him directly or through emails [email protected] or [email protected]. He may possibly still be reached through the editor of this office and the letters will be forwarded to him. You can Friend him at his Timeline on Facebook at stephen.erdmann1. His articles can be seen at https://wordpresscom507. wordpress.com, ufospotlight.wordpress.com and ufodigestblog.wordpresscom.com.
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1 Later, in Amazing Stories Magazine, October, 1957, Arnold revised his opinion: “[In 1947] Ray Palmer told me in a phone call that nobody would find out what the flying saucers were, or capture one – and today, ten years later, that boy is right!….I’m fairly well convinced that there is a type of living creature in our atmosphere. At least some of the things I’ve seen exhibit the characteristics of a living thing more than they do of a mechanical thing.” (FATE Magazine, September, 1994, p. 26.)
2 Last heard, Moriarty Wild, after living several years on the west Coast, had moved overseas and was said to have possibly died from cancer.
3 “From the name Charles Fort, a pioneer in cataloging strange phenomena…any natural phenomena which does not seem to have a logical or scientific explanation.” www.boards.straightdope.com/definitionoffortean. “Etymology: from Charles Fort, famous investigator of anomalous phenomena.” En.wikionery.org/wiki/fortean.
4 “….The UFO Study Group of Greater St. Louis in 2010, who [sic] print and tell stories that are more fantastic than those the flying saucer contactees told in the 1950s….” (Moriarty Wild, August, 2010.)
5 In his quest to vanquish enemies and obtain Debunkers Truth, as it might be called, Wild has stated and also challenged poor grammar as if substantiation of same also validated George Orwell and his character Winston’s war against Crimestop/ Thoughtcrime and the evil Newspeak and Ingsoc as shown in Orwell’s novel 1984. Wild’s worry about the misuse of European and British syntax is almost Fundamentalist Puritan consternation, same as Orwell’s alleged insights on The Party’s tricky and slovenly used language. To the contrary: Orwell was ‘against’ such fanatic wrangling: “Most of us have a lingering belief that every choice is between good and evil, and that if a thing is it is also right. We should, I think, get rid of this belief…..in politics one can never do more than decide which of two evils is the lesser….” (“George Orwell: Writers and Leviathan”, Summer, 1948. Orwell.ru/library). “….he was equally aware of the importance of the individual’s private life and the matters of everyday existence….his faith in the instincts of the common people and distrust of intellectuals….”
www.liferesearchuniversity.com.
6 The Science TV cable show “The Mystery Dinosaur” (2006) made this comment: “There is no such thing as a Rosetta Stone in science.” Educator Shelly Blake-Plock said on April 18, 2011 in his article “I Don’t Want More Professional Development,” www.teachoaoerless.blogspt.com: “….nothing trumps the fact that the world is not a well-oiled machine….there is no such thing as perfect grammar. There is no such thing as a right answer….there are only relationships between things…..the world is not professional…..the world….is social…..meandering path of the ever changing social development…..” Hidden behind a phobia masking Wild’s syntactical, grammatical, and even social belief in “Purity” was the real world of humans and how they contended with their hopes and dreams.
7 “See, I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve….this town deserves a better class of criminal….Do I really look like a guy with a plan?…. I took your little plan and turned it upon itself….introduce a little anarchy, upset the established plan, and everything becomes chaos….” (The Joker in the movie The Dark Knight, 2008.)
8 Shades of: “A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can’t get rid of the ‘bad’ parts of technology and retain only the ‘good’ parts….technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back – short of the overthrow of the whole technological system.”
Unabomber Manifesto, Ted Kaczynski, www.cyber.eserver.org/unaborn.text.
9 “….personal responsibility, hard work, self-discipline, proper dress and conduct…(against) bandwagon-jump(ing), trend-following…play toys (of) modern technology…trendy cell-phones, wide-screen TVs…purpose of weakening American heritage….Fabian Socialist infiltrat(ion)…Alter girls, women Lectoresses…Christian rock music…(women as) soldiers, sailors, mayors, governors, security guards, bus drivers and police officers…poison like ‘feminism’…wealthy Jewish Communists…ordinary people who were way too eager to believe in wondrous things…” (Moriarty Wild, August, 2010). In past letters to Steve Erdmann, Wild has described himself as a “misanthrope,” and I certainly found that to be true in as much as his political, social views on Men’s destiny and abilities, though far from being totally inaccurate, oft times seemed deep, dark, all-encompassing and unyielding: “I do not offer these remarks as an excuse for my failure to be more cheerful in my letters….At one point many years ago, I developed a capacity for sarcasm….But I sure developed an ability to be sarcastic, and I used that ability….” “Yes, I take a dim view of the human race…a vast ocean of parasites and parasitism…I have no hope for the human race, or for the future of the U.S. It is too appalling even to think about.” “I am a curmudgeon…too many people, too many distractions, too much commotion, and too much noise…Abolish modern culture…transforming American culture into a sewer of degradation…almost all the heroes are dead…the enormous wave of revulsion I feel…American society began a downward spiral into the gutter…more sympathy for the Japanese and German enemies…World War II….than….younger generations….today….more respect for the cackling of a barnyard full of chickens….my only impulse is to throw up….” “….I told you what a curmudgeon I have become.” “Whenever I get fed up with the human race – which is to say: practically every day…certainly not some abstraction called ‘humankind’ or ‘brotherly love’ …an emotion I shall never feel for the human race…” “I am wrestling with powerful emotions: Sometimes I win, sometimes they do. But this cannot go on indefinitely…Whenever you hear the word ‘misanthrope’ or ‘curmudgeon,’,think of me. I have just about ‘had it up to here’ with the human race…this country largely a sewer of degradation…Did you count the vacant or boarded-up buildings as you walked by them? You are absolutely right: down-town is not quite the same, festive, happy place it was in the 1950s-1960s. I wonder why that could be, ha, ha…each entrance-way, a sign is posted, reading: ‘This is not a bathroom’…. adopting the standards of the (white leftist) counterculture and the (black) thug-and-whore culture…lowest common denominator in the white leftist counter-culture and the black thug-and-whore culture….our dumbed-down, adolescent culture.” (Moriarty Wild, Letters, November 8, 2001, March 24, May 22, June 30, September 15, November 12, 2002, February 5, 2006, September 9, 2008.)
10 Brian May said: “If we do open the door wide, can we, as concerned scientists, artist, and human beings, find a way to propagate just the decent, noble parts of our compassion? Not greed, but generosity. Not conflict, but cooperation. Not war, but peace, in which all men, all women, all creatures, share the glorious gifts of nature – the glorious gift of life.”
Astronomy Magazine, p. 31, February, 2012.
11 “It’s not that simple; with the Joker, it never is.”
The Batman in the movie The Dark Knight, 2008.
12 This trait was found in the personality of the adventurer Stanley Livingston, spoken about in Willpower [Ray F. Baumeister and John Tierney {Penguin Books} and Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, Tim Zeal]: “The creation of order can only have been an antidote to the destructive capacities of nature all around him….Stanley’s belief in the link between external order and inner self-discipline have been confirmed recently in studies….”
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