In the late 1960's I read the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn. Of course, I thought, but how could anyone fail to get hip...?

An extensive genre has since been created from this seminal work and one would think that this literature would have had some cultural effect. Yet it is difficult to find. Despite the wave of "diversity" in the academic institutions, the professions are rapidly repressive of creative work which point to new concepts of reality. The more fundamental the concept, the more rapid the repressive reaction. This is true everywhere. I have cruised a lot of places, institutions, and people. I have never failed to find this repression omnipresent in very nearly every field of human endeavor. Give me evidence that I am wrong, and I will gladly modify this generalization.

The claim is always that much creative work is beyond the conventional bounds of commonly accepted principles or paradigms, hence a waste of time which only cranks pursue. It astounds me that our culture persists in the maintenance of such a stupid orthodox position. Yes, there is a lot of cranky stuff out there. But some of the stuff hidden in the fringe is the basis for the realization of a higher development of science or human culture in general. And, there never was a work by a "crank" which did not provide an excellent set-up for a remarkable real-world educational demonstration of how scientific research and analysis really works or can be made to work..

I used to think it was simply ignorance. Then I thought it must be stupidity. Now I think it is these plus a certain cynical venality - a political posture, no more no less, in the face of uncertainty by people who really don't know, never knew, but who are bound and determined to continue faking it, their professional expertise, because faking it pays so well. People who are faking it are most likely not competent to treat the fringe with forthright intellectual honesty. Rather they are likely to see any attention paid to something else beyond their understanding as COMPETITION for money, respect, position, power, you name it.

Have we filled our governments and educational institutions with too many people who, concerning fundamental issues of intellectual honesty, are faking it?

Like a Pope once did at the very beginning of the Renaissance in ordering the torching of San Bruno in a Roman square for daring to speculate that the Cosmos might be infinite in all directions and that the Earth might be circling around the Sun. Ohhh, such Impudence, not even the Angels dare to suggest.

Well, thank God they are no longer burning people at the stake, like San Bruno, for articulating a fundamentally new thought. No, in our civilized age they are content with mockery, slander, and witty ridicule in hopes of driving them into pauperism or into complete irrelevance.

One thing seems to have become very clear to me. It is absolutely essential to evolve a new ground for the emergence of philosophical and scientific leadership in North America. The university based cliques in the U.S. are impossibly parochial and corrupt. There are wasting enormous quantities of resources obliviously ignoring far too much.

Can the "net" provide a cultural antidote to the powers of the "old-boy" cliques? Can the "net" somehow surround them at sunrise and massacre the most hidebound obstructionism? Or even better, can the "net" increasingly render them irrelevant?

Orthodoxy Vs The Cold Fusion Barbarians

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