Correspondence with
Bill Botts

If you are tired of jokes and wish something higher, just give me a dissertation on the following: the slaying of the dragon is really the ultimate marriage.

I think it is very good to want to draw your own conclusions rather than be told what to do.

Your letter was very good. "General"? No. I believe in starting with minute particulars and, if we really think, we may work up to generalities from them.

I am rather with you on the bureaucrats. I think of the revered Truman as the gunman of the Pendergast gang.¹ I saw a cartoon recently where a man carrying a sign "The end of the world is coming" passed the Pentagon and they rushed out and arrested him on the ground that what he was saying was Top Secret. It is always the same way. Look what they did to Mitchell.²

As to intellectuals, I think you are in the main right. They rush to intellectualism to avoid the necessity of thinking. They use words, which are generally received, and finally become overwhelmed by the exuberance of their own verbosity.

Do not be too discouraged about the future. Capitalism has its bad sides and is becoming more communistic; communism has its bad sides, and is becoming more capitalistic. At the present time there is conflict between the two, but I am confident that eventually there will be worked out something which is neither capitalism nor communism and which we cannot anticipate. As you say, too many of our ideas are emotional relics; nevertheless, we must not be negative, but rather press forward in our own little way.

As to Viet Nam, I of course do not know all the facts, but my general view is that every man must solve his own problems for himself (the value lies in the struggle). I also consider it superb insolence to think that one's own ideas are so sacrosanct that they may be forced on another even by violence. I am not even convinced that the ideas of the West are highter than those of the East. Years ago at the time of the Spanish-American war I was opposed to taking over the Philippines for these very reasons. I am opposed to communism as strangling individual independence but consider it a phase in the general development created largely by ourselves. The communists sat, "Big brother is watching you." Our Bible belt says, "God is watching you." What's the difference? Individual responsibility is gone in either case.

That was a lovely card you two sent. You do not need to look particularly for a Buddhist temple for me as I am equally interested in Zen, Taoism, Confucionism, various forms of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Existentialism, and in short any method by which man reaches out to ultimate reality.

You are quite right that it is not necessary to reach out to ultimate reality. Existence comes before being and we are all free agents. I think it advisable to reach out to reality because if we rely upon appearances as disclosed to us by our all too fallible senses, reality may step in with other plans.

I recommend your reading Ionesco's recent play Rhinoceros where he shows an awareness of an inner world. The citizens of a town are turned into rhinoceroses because they reach out for stereotypes instead of archetypes.

I do not presume to attribute rudeness or selfishness to you — just to myself.

I have always found the Emigration Service the most annoying of the whole bureaucratic system. Rather than bother with them, in the old days, we used to bring in Chinamen in barrels of sauerkraut but I suppose the Japanese are too fussy for that.

I never heard the expression, "burn your britches behind you"; I always said, "Put a burr under your tail." In any event, the thought has the highest authority.

I notice that in the Book of Instructions of the Dead Sea Scroll people, they quaintly say, "Do not set your sins before you and backslide through them." By the way, your statement reminds me of the belief of some that Julius Caesar married an Irish girl because when he came to the Rubicon he proposed to Bridget.

I am glad that your wife is doing so well and that you both have something left inside, because that is what conquers catastrophes.

All I can say is that it is better to go on a 'nexpedition than to be a procrastitute.

I appreciate your difficulties but regard practical difficulties as opportunities.

As for myself, a very good rule in dealing with people is to expect them only to be themselves, not the sort of people you think they ought to be.

Last year our proverb was: Life is what comes up when you have other plans.

¹ Tom "T.J." Pendergast (1873–1945) was a political boss who controlled Kansas City, Missouri, and environs from 1925 to 1939. (In Mary Brown's transcription of Mr. Brown's letter, the name is spelled 'Prendergast'.)

²Possible reference to NSA cryptologist Bernon F. Mitchell, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1960. In response the U.S. government labeled Mitchell a "junior mathematician" and, in a move provocative for the time, suggested that he was homosexual.