Philosophy

Philosophy

Even as a child I was always intrigued with the secrets of the universe. Growing up in a space-age my entire generation was fascinated by traveling to other planets, exploring the moon, going to Mars and beyond. The generation that came of age in the 1960s was born with the advent of the atomic bomb. Our first television experience was with twilight zone and the outer limits. The postwar baby boom generation learned to question authority.

Growing up in the 60s.

After all the inability to question authority had led to the great Holocaust of the second world war.

 President Kennedy told us it was time to reach for the stars. The Russians launched Sputnik. We would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. And as we saw Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and declare one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind, we launched a new generation of science fiction movies and TV programs. Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey speculated on the evolution of mankind from Ape-man to human being to Space Child.


Back on Earth Gene Roddenberry created the TV program beloved by today's nerds: Star Trek, a journey towards the final frontiers of space and time. By considering our place in the universe, an entire generation was being asked to turn to philosophy, to understand the age-old questions of humanity, and to question the attitudes and values that had let our parents into the hell of devastating war.

At some point in time, it became understood by the authorities that govern education as well as by the power structure that too much inquiry is not ultimately useful. If curiosity killed the cat, it would also kill unquestioning loyalty. The establishment figures at universities in the United States during the 1960s were not happy with the free speech movement, or with young people questioning our involvement in Vietnam. Nor were they happy with the burgeoning civil rights movement, a movement based on the teachings of Gandhi and nonviolence.



 People who sought new answers were demonized as hippies, mad men, drug addicts, and freaks. While universities filled with young men seeking draft deferments, the philosophy departments at colleges across the United States suddenly found millions of new students. Not only did these students seek refuge from war, they also looked for answers to the burning questions of the day. In the 1960s and early 70s, colleges and universities that served the postwar generation were green houses for new ideas. It is surprising to me to see how much of today's popular culture has been recycled from 50 years ago when I was growing up.

Hollywood movies continue to recycle Star Trek and Star Wars as popular culture. James Bond and Mission impossible were creations of the Cold War, Marvel comics were fodder for my young imagination. And yet 50 years later, we continue to be offered the same themes. It's amazing to me how powerful the cultural icons created in the 1960s continue to be.



Back in the 1960s creative writers at network TV were busy creating Star Trek, James Bond knockoffs, and Mission Impossible. A young Stan Lee was cooking up such comic book heroes as Spiderman, Thor, Iron Man, and the Avengers. And philosophically, great creative minds were also at work. BF Skinner, and Noam Chomsky continue to influence education today. Working in the 1960s, John C Lilly made breakthroughs in understanding the psychology of dolphins. His contributions are just beginning to be understood. The ideas of Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, and Buckminster Fuller are still considered gospel in many circles. In the Catholic Church today the work of Pope John XXIII is finally being recognized as breakthrough. And the ideas and concepts of Eastern philosophy are finally getting their due in the West.



Today many of these ideas are presented as if they are entirely new; but as a young man growing up in California in the 1960s, I was exposed to all these discussions at an early age. At the age of 12,  I was a voracious reader. My grandfather had a deep interest in all things esoteric and occult. At his mansion in Hollywood he had a huge library. And among his books I found an amazing collection. I can remember some of the books I went through: there was a series called The Third Eye, by one T. Lobsang Rampa, which explained how through initiation by Tibetan elders one may arrive at higher states of consciousness. There was Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. There was a book called Man and Dolphin,  and The Mind of the Dophin by John C Lilly. Lilly later went on to pioneer the sensory deprivation tank and experiments and consciousness and neurophysiology.

My Grandfather, Clinton Stoner, Hollywood Designer

My grandfather had an entire collection of books written by Edgar Cayce, explaining reincarnation. He subscribed to a magazine called Fate Magazine, which concentrated on esoteric matters: UFO's, telekinesis, telepathic communication, research done by Russian scientists on mental telepathy, and psychic experiments.


Research done on UFOs by Col. Donald Kehoe in a project sponsored by the United States Air Force called the blue book project .


My grandfather was intrigued by the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and his library betrayed this interest. He had a vast number of books on the subject. These books supplemented my reading of science fiction. My favorite author was Isaac Asimov. He had a series of books about robots, beginning with I Robot.



Then there was The Rest of the Robots.  Asimov was a scientist and mathematician who wrote speculative fiction about the future. His most famous work is probably The Foundation Trilogy, much of whose premise forms the basis of the Empire in Star Wars. Apart from science fiction, my grandfather had a great interest in forgotten worlds. He had books on Egypt, a collection of tiny figures of Osiris and Ra, books on ancient Greece and Rome. I was always fascinated by the mythology of Greece and Rome. And around that time went to the movies and saw Jason and the Argonauts with special effects by Ray Harryhausen with my brothers in 1963.



 My vivid teenage imagination was fueled by the kindling given me by my grandfather. And my burning questions were fanned into flames by the culture and thinking of the 1960s.

In my formative years, I spent time at a Benedictine monastery in Valyermo, California. My father was an executive producer at network television, making a move from CBS in New York to NBC in California. At first we stayed at the ranch house of a Hollywood executive in a place called Pear Blossom, in the Mojave Desert. But after making the acquaintance of the abbot at Valyermo, my father rented a property owned by the monastery.

My Step-father, Michael Allan, French Actor, Hollywood Producer

 In exchange for mounting a dramatic production at the summer festival held by the Benedictine monks, we lived in the house called the Rose cottage. We had left Connecticut in January of 1964, and traveled through the worst blizzard in history of the South. I missed most of the school year, but received an excellent education in philosophy and theology from one of the elders at the monastery. His name was father Yang. A Chinese priest who had escaped communist persecution during the war, he had come to America through Belgium. Father Yang was a deep philosopher.

His understanding of Christianity was coupled with his own unique Buddhist perspective, and tempered by the fire of war. According to the rule of St. Benedict, acolytes must engage in some practical work. Father Yang was a sculptor. His sculptures were unusual pieces of driftwood burned by a blowtorch and shaped by his own fingers. After a long walk in the desert searching for pieces of quartz to add to my rock collection, I would often find him near the horse corrals working on a huge tree trunk. Camel cigarette in his mouth at a blowtorch in his hand, he would work quietly. Sometimes I had questions. I would ask him, "how is it possible that the entire human race has descended from Adam and Eve?"

Adam and Eve by William Blake

He would look at me with almond eyes and a charming smile and then look back to his piece of driftwood. Tapping the ash off his cigarette, he would say "well, it never says that there is only one Adam and one Eve." Again he would smile, aiming the blowtorch and blasting away. I could see a horse appearing in the blasted wood. With this I would walk off to admire the ducks in the duck pond, or have lunch with the monks in the refectory while listening to a reading from the Bible.

Duckpond at Valyermo Benedictine Monastery

And so I spent the summer of  '64. That was 50 years ago, and yet I've never lost my inquiring nature. What father Yang taught me was the need to bring intelligence in harmony with faith.

Milan Kundera is one of my favorite authors, because his work examines the public implications of private life as well as the private consecuences of political life. His style of fiction involves endless digression into philosophical musings. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for example, explores the impact of the 1968 Prague Spring on the intimate lives of his characters; but also demonstrates how the personal lives of his characters create the Prague Spring.

Milan Kundera

My own personal life was marked by incredible domestic violence. At the same time, violence exploded in American cities in the form of police repression against demonstrators for civil rights. Violence was exported to Southeast Asian in the form of the Vietnam War. Friends and family members had been drafted to fight overseas. And finally, I faced psychological violence from my own internal cerebral mechanisms in the form of epilepsy. Epilepsy has historically been associated by mysticism, and my own dissociative mental states led me to search deeper into the origin of consciousness.

In the midst of all this turmoil I sought peace. And in the midst of all these questions I sought a philosophical approach. If I couldn't find solutions, at least I might seek out a framework for analysis.



And so I began my Journey to Surrender as a child of the 60s. I'm not sure if I found the answers. But along the way, I've discovered that what makes Plato a great philosopher is not the solutions he sometimes offers, but the questions he so potently raises. Violence continues. So does my search for peace. Perhaps we can make some of this journey together. Stay tuned to this space for more.