Subject: Let me introduce myself ... Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 01:49:05 -0700 From: mcpherso (John McPherson) To: childwrite Sunni wrote: I thought it might be a good idea for us to introduce ourselves, as this book project idea seems to be catching some interest, and we will (I hope!) be working together on this for some time. Some of the names here I recognize from Libprofs, but some are new to me, and I find it helps me to "know" the people I'm talking with. Sounds like a good idea! I'm curious myself ... There's obviously a great deal I could write about myself, but I'm sure the vast bulk of it would only be of compelling interest to myself ... :-). I met Win in the early '80's at the San Diego Creative Problem Solving Institute Winterfest. At that time I had a strong interest in 'mental' experience, so naturally much of Win's work appealed to me (psychegenic trips, relaxing/healing practices, increasing intelligence, creativity methods, etc.). A few years later I attempted a "brain building marathon", a 3 week intensive training program based on Win's book _How to Increase Your Intelligence_, and much can be said about that. Shortly after that I took the Mensa and Intertel tests to see if the brain marathon had an effect in terms of measurable intelligence increase, and it seems likely that there was. My interest in reading exploded at that point and I asked Win what kinds of things he might recommend, and two of his suggestions were _Science and Sanity_ by A. Korzybski (the founding work of general semantics), and _General System Theory_ by L. Bertalanffy, and I plowed through them. The GST book seemed to me to have a great deal of "promise", but the general semantics book produced a revolution in my consciousness ... and _much_ more can be said about that! For the next several years I went through college and got a degree in Systems Science/Engineering, but found that the university's version of systems theory wasn't exactly what I had in mind ... so I became disappointed and somewhat burned out by that. Meanwhile my "real" education went on in a number of diverse fields (too bad we didn't have Renaissance University then! I would've applied ...). I now work as a computer programmer in a scientific research institution, and I do reasonable well at it, though it's not quite my driving passion. I've had many interests these past few years, e.g., living systems theory, renewed emphasis on general semantics, exploring the new developments of the Net and the Web, various genres of music, holistic practices (health, being), space operas (Next Generation, Babylon 5), recently foreign languages, etc., but one of the major ones has been my discovery of the philosophy and practice of libertarian 'social individualism' in terms of politics, economics, ethics, and even metaphysics. One of my major influences in this regard has been my discovery of the writings of Ayn Rand ... she made clear and simple a number of things that had confused me for years. Not that I'm a 'Randroid' or anything, but I do owe a great deal to her. It occurs to me that the next major philosophical synthesis will be derived in part from the epistemology and metaphysics of Korzybski's general-semantics, and the ethical-political- economic philosophy of Rand, and of course in part from the 'Aquarian Age' movement (New Age, holistic health, accelerated learning, meditation, eastern philosophies and practices, etc.). I've been toying with the first part of the synthesis as a kind of "post-Aristolelian Objectivism" ... revamping Rand's philosophy by "non-Aristolelianizing" or "general-semanticizing" it ... but this may take a few years to accomplish. As far as children are concerned ... I don't have any of my own, and in fact I'd pretty much forgotten them until people around me started having them. It was _then_ that I re-discovered them, and it occured to me that many of them are probably among the best human beings on the planet! I love to play with them, and am often utterly enchanted by their joyous energy, ready friendships, 'seeing-things-for the-first-time' consciousness', word play, ease of imagining and making things up, and their prospects of their whole lives being ahead of them, etc. Having been "away" from all that for some time, I find it very easy to get caught up in their worlds and several of them actually seem to regard me as an "equal" ... and I can't tell you how much that means to me :-). So, a few years ago I would've had almost zero interest in a project writing stories for children, but since then I've had near the equivalent of a revelation about them, and now I feel a "kinship" and a friendliness and empathy with them that hadn't occured to me before. I had a vision about a year ago ... my niece and nephew were "playing" in a room, but there was something rather strange and wonderful about this room: everything in it was of such sophistication that adults used the stuff too, but it was all simple and "friendly" enough that children could use it too. There was no separation, no distinction of 'adult' and 'child' in the "infrastructure" of the house ... it was all for "human beings" of all ages. There were no hard and sharp edges on the furniture, all was smooth and contoured and aesthetic ... everything in the room seemed to integrated seamlessly with everything else, it was all of a piece. Further, they were playing with a telephone or some other means of communication, and they were contacting other people out there in the world, all in "play". It then occured to me that even the world, or substantial parts of it, was/were similarly integrated ... the world was so simple, friendly, intelligently integrated, that 'children' could be quite involved in it too! I had the impression that even the "street" outside and the "cars" on it were safe and "user friendly" ... a child could fall in the "street" and not get hurt or be put in danger. It was as if some people just started designing things that were safe, rugged, fully functional, non-dangerous, easy enough so a child could use them, powerful enough that adults would, and the implication was that this 'integrative' philosophy had spread out into the society into the social fabric of it, so that 'children' were simply part of and welcomed into "the adult world" as normal partners in "business as usual". I don't know if other people might share this vision (in the truest sense of the word!), but at the time it occured to me that "yes, finally! This is the way it should be, it's so simple and positive ... at last I've discovered the way ..." (one aspect of it anyway :-). John