Fear of Fame.

Fear of Fame.

Recently I remembered one of the biggest obstacles that hit me when I had my shattering breakthrough nearly four decades back. Fear of Fame. So I decided to do what any little lad these days would do to see just what was afoot on the know all, know nothing, as my wife would have called it in another context; The Internet.

Imagine then my surprise when I discovered in a word: nothing. Well not exactly nothing, but no clinical definition of the syndrome. If that is what they would refer to the state as a known phobia. Plenty of near misses and supporting gobbledegook, but no solid gravitas explanation. Why? Actually one solution to this apparent riddle is that so few people do not, in their heart of hearts, wish for their; fifteen minutes of fame, as proposed by Andy Worhol? I have often wondered at the precise context of this remark and the attributation. Well he had a point. Even after all these years it is impossible to shake off the feeling that while I have cowered away, watching with at times a surly envy, as others climbed to fame, or some case infamy, on the back of my ideas and hard won experience, the conditions have arisen, and a window of opportunity beckons to put my case.

In the first instance even at the relative tender age of 37, I realised just what a ticklish situation I was in. In a word I had hit the greatest Jackpot of all time....but.  What did I do with such knowledge? Who would profit most with its exploitation? How would my family survive the uproar? How would I survive the distortion of reality? Immediately I had grasped one significant truth. There was only one answer that suited me at that moment in time: the knowledge had to be disseminated piecemeal to a number of sources who were better placed than me to evaluate the worth of my vision and how best to approach and broadcast the treatment if the decision on its validity was a positive one.

I set to work. Driven by heaven knows what to produce over a short period; articles, and letters. A sufficiency of information. In all an attempt to build a case against, as well as possible, to scot the possibility of any influential arm of the establishment would divulge my efforts prematurely, under the extremely weak pretext that I was insane. Somehow I instinctively understood that my very modest education would not at that early stage withstand a battering from the superior egos my vision would soon bring me into conflict with if place under the inquisition of the media. Was this a cowardly act on my part or the action of a highly intelligent but roughly hewn intellect protecting itself as much by the instinct of survival, as desire for riches material, or any other variety of fame?

Fame maybe the spur, but any such ill though out action could easily bring down the whole pack of cards. Here was an unknown prole, with the greatest breakthrough answer, in the universal struggle to help the human race breakout of its eternally damned vicious battle with itself, and he decides the time is not yet. The project team had to accept this decision backed by the best psychiatric opinion available  Over the years since it has barely been weighed in the scales. There was always someone who thought they were smart enough to carry the project through. In the meantime it has been marvellous to experience the subtle help received over the makeshift network from those privy to this top secret project.

Once the realisation dawned upon me how these efforts threatened a whole phalanx of the second rate, who would see their expertise and therefore their likelihoods threatened by the new knowledge. My deductions confirmed my course as the best for the time. With the time lapse now well noted and established if there is nothing further for me to add I might as well shut up shop. One major point I had overlooked was even though I had decided to give away my initial ideas and perhaps the essence of the breakthrough, eventually this problem would have to be faced by me. Sooner or later the bullet would have to be bitten and a more in depth explanation would have to be forthcoming. Now my wife always chants the line from St. Matthew's gospel; sufficient unto the day the evil thereof.

Whatever my thoughts on giving away my efforts to that point in time. I now know without any second thought it was most assuredly the best solution as the invention and existence of the Internet has proved to be a vastly better solution than I could ever have imagined. Now my confidence grows with each completed entry to my blog and with it the certainty this must have been preordained, for each problem my fingers throw out my mind soon creates a solution.

New Millennium, New Century,

New Millennium, New Century, New Pastures.

Leading on from my last post on matters concerning the way the mind can be encouraged to block an idea or trend that is potentially dangerous or seen to be so to the driver or driving force or the opposite treatment of the  idea that can be seen as a welcome refreshment to the open mind looking for a new reality.  I have since read in the Steve Jobs biography of what came to be known to those working with and for him as his; Distortion of Reality Field. It seems this was a technique in which he developed the ability while talking to a colleague or someone he wished to take along a path which the other suspected was not grounded in reality but a manifestation of his ability to 'read ' people emotionally and exploit by will power a generally conceded desire to please the acknowledged superior brain.

The idea that in some way the alpha male can produce exploit and maintain a flow of fresh new and fertile ideas and not acknowledge their source, is a common one among those who have worked for any number of years within the confines of the urban jungle. Where the conflict of demarcation between a crushing of the spirit and the essential fight back required to do the best job and to claim one's own authorship is a conundrum I often found was settled in my own case, and probably in many others, by the prosaic demands of the crust on the table, the clothes for the children,the mortgage and the thousand and one other trivia that make the life of urban man fighting his corner. There are few in the class of Steve Jobs, that is a given, but there are thousands who use a moderation of his technique to win a little here and a little there each day.

There does seem to me to be, with the advent of the ultimate dream machine, which Mr.Jobs and his colleagues have helped bring to fruition as productive and fertile life with a new and vastly rewarding, explosive dimension of endeavour that he may have sensed but could no more define just where it would all ultimately lead any more than I could visualize how my own mental upheaval might develop with the input of other minds. The tragic early demise of Mr.Jobs as I see in his biography apparently had a self full filling element, which in my own experience of the way reality was so completely distorted for me, was the very trivia of urban life proving the saving grace. Allowing me to slowly recover my equilibrium in the hands of professional medics and a forgiving and loving family.