Too many damn diversions. If I were to count up the number of diversions that took me away from my calling, from my authentic labor it would demoralize me no end.

For several years it was people; the constant flow and flux of odd creatures coming in and out of the picture at all hours of the day, always bending my ear for something. So I stayed away from people and disciplined myself to the book, to reading and note taking, to expanding the desire to learn and encompass many areas I hardly knew existed.

For some time, I have been diverted by that most pernicious and tempting of categories: the news event, the extra personal event that screams for attention before it recedes back into the general millwheel of history. Has Vietnam been over 12 years? It seems like yesterday; the heaviness of it, the debates, the protests, the indelible scenes, the worry and so forth. Watergate? Just 12 years ago? It hardly seems possible. And there it is, an incident packed away in the memory house of the race, available at any time for appraisal, for evaluation as a gauge for whatever future horrors await.

The Carter Presidency? That seems a long time ago.

So extra personal events, even on a global scale, become a diversion. They should not be a simple diversion but they become one when you allow them to penetrate your brain and become more to yourself than what is best about yourself.

And most of the events are superfluous without reading and having some understanding of world history or the interpretation of history or without some idea of the motives of people and nations.

The world is obviously interested in itself and evidences this so what more can one say or do but saddle up and ride around the evidence for a while?

But for the disinterested mind events can only be an aspect of the world. It's the aspect of the world that signifies decision, conflict and so on.

Then, at a certain point, I became diverted by the particular, the minutiae of detail that makes up this society. Every bit of detail has had some meaning, some resonance and I spent time in attempting to put the detail back in a manner of speaking.

The financial markets and computer have been the latest diversion. That aspect of me loyal to the society, to the prime pump of the society enjoys that diversion.

What is it all for? This is obviously an eternal and acceptable question. The mind is always searching for the way out of a particular dilemma.

I believe in freedom. I believe in the obligations of freedom which are simple and few. That is, you must think “away” from every predisposition possible. You must be able to grasp fundamentals and create out of that knowledge. You want everyone else to have the benefits of that freedom.

A society without this freedom is a dead society.

(1986)

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