Chapter 12

Dr. Winston's office

Opening the door, slowly, I cleared my throat to ensure Dr. Winston wasn't startled.

He looked up as if expecting me. It was still a drowsy afternoon in his office, the blinds half-closed such that one could have some sunlight filter in, but no one could see what he was up to or distract his work. The windows opened on one of the quadrangles of the campus, but Dr. Winston was inside when he was inside and preferred to get his hat and walking stick if he wanted to get some outside activity.

He motioned me to a seat, put away the notes he was making inside the book he was making them from - at least the top one. He had several more books open on the various piles around his desk and put slips of paper or pieces of notepad in those which might fall off and moved any which he needed to in order to make space for note taking.

I looked around the room while he was getting ready. The room didn't seem to change much. Books on shelfs with various papers stacked and cross-stacked here and there. A simple hooked rug on the floor and a sturdy desk near the center. Two chairs opposite for guests, both sturdy oak captain chairs without rollers. Dr Winston's chair I could only guess at, since it was covered with a jacket, despite the coat rack beside the door. That coat rack held only his hat and an umbrella.

Dr. Winston had finished clearing off space and had gotten a notepad freed up for my visit. He cleared his own throat and looked up. "Hi Herbert. This is some surprise. Didn't expect you for awhile."

Me: "Well, I hope I didn't interrupt. You always seem busy with something important."

Dr. W: "Yes and no. I'm here for you, like any other I would counsel. The other work is research on things that need to be sorted out - but those are background work, geting the odd bits of philosophy updated to be available to modern theorists. Pretty dry work sometimes, but you can never tell when some tidbit might be useful. But what can I help you with today?"

Me: "Seems I ran across some interesting data which I just wanted to turn over with someone. The other day I had been visiting the home place on an annual vacation from the Center and got a real surprise. I was out walking in the woods and got real peace of mind. A couple days later I tried it again and got the same result. Since I've been back, I've been able to get that same feeling even though I was in my noisy dorm room or even in an office with a few others.

"What is interesting about this is that this is what I was looking for when I found the Center and thought I'd get this from the Center, but never did."

Dr. W: "So you've accomplished something you were always wanting to, but you don't know if this is related to all the training and programming you've taken through the Center?"

Me: "Exactly. How much of this was achievable through what I studied in the Center and put myself through?"

Dr. W: "And the answer is..."

Me: "Well, I've thought it over and compared how I felt and the things which might have accomplished it. I tried to trace this back, but there was no cause-and-effect simplicity to this. I did nothing to begin with to start this, other than - oh, I was already having doubts about Center life. This might have caused some inspection of things."

Dr. W: "What type of things were you looking at?"

Me: "I was looking for the loopholes, the things which worked and those which didn't work. You see, the problem I had earlier was that people weren't following the policies Rhino laid down. These all were premised on the point that Rhino was maximally, almost always 'right' about what he wrote. I could agree with many of his observations.

"Then I thought, well yes - but he wrote those issues which they are mis-interpreting. This resolved that he wouldn't be particularly responsible for a management culture which had gone into misinterpreting his work. But then, again, I recalled the times I had met him personally, early on - years and years back. My impression was that he yelled too much. He was petulant to get things done. Everyone jumped and moved around and were themselves anxious to please. He was waited on hand and foot, having accomplished some sort of demi-god status - I was included in the mix at that time, just happy to be around him, the founder of this great movement.

"But still that impression stuck out. I was with him several times and it was always the same. He could be charming, but he could also go on a spoiled-kid tirade. I know people and I know that such an attitude wouldn't last if he had to work in a regular job. Of course, then they would say that he wasn't regular, he was a cut above and so was working at his own crafts, self-employed, so he could act anyway he wanted. But this logic itself showed the flaw in how things were running.

"What if this personality quirk had gotten written into his policy to defend his own personal attitudes and operating basis? If he operated as a spoiled brat when things didn't go his way, but was surrounded by people who doted on him hand and foot, then this would insulate him from the real world and the effect would be magnified.

Dr. W: "Which is why you call the Center a cult?"

Me: "Exactly. The Center doesn't allow a lot of influence from the outside, is always derogatory to it and keeps its people insulated from a lot of interaction. Newspapers aren't read, TV is banned, and it is hard to see family and old friends, since one moves away from these to be part of staff. You have to do all these special arrangements in order to get permission to leave for a couple of weeks: special programming, all sorts of write-ups in addition to the forms one has to fill out to get permission to go... Anyway, it's a real pain and so many times people just put off seeing the family to avoid the hassle.

"The point is that because the Center insulates its people from the outside world, the corporate culture would inevitably develop into its own peculiar slant. It would form out of the various policies and issues it was based on. Since only Rhino's policies could be used, then it would form a mirror to Rhino himself. It would behave in a genius spoiled-brat basis.

"This explains why the Center executives work more on personality instead of policy and have developed some interesting attitudes. The person who took over after Rhino died was not spoiled like Rhino, but was dynamic. However, he could and would lose his temper. So the management of the Center started taking on his personality aspects after awhile, using Rhino's writings to justify it. Quietly, he sent almost everyone near him through the BRP and then got them back to their old job. This meant that he got everyone to fear him and kept the compliant ones around.

"With no one creating new issues or techical advancements, the drive began to invest the monies they were still recieving into new buildings and real-estate rather than improving introductory services. Everything got a make over to make it modern and attractive.

"But like polishing an apple with a worm at the core, the whole thing became a hollow facade to me. I visited these franchises and talked to these people. I got positions at the various management levels and saw how these people acted. Comparing how these various people acted showed me that the people who had the greatest contact with the outside world acted saner than those who lived the corporate Center life as their 'dedicated' staff. Some of these last were quite insane, in fact, having positions which would enable them to get along, but really had nothing to show for their lives and were completely dependent on the Center for everything."

Dr. W: "And what does this have to do with your revelation in the woods?"

Me: "It got me thinking that there were real alternatives to Rhino's 'way out.' Ones that could be found outside of the Center and its personal programming issues. You see, this is something I had been looking for and I had it within me all the time. I knew I could be calmer than many around me, but never thought that I could simply create peace of mind whenever I wanted to.

"This really hinged on a Rhino writing that came out about a year before he died, where he said something along the lines that a person creates his own attitude toward things. Now this is pretty common sensical, and added to the other points he wrote made more sense. But more interesting than that it actually removed any reason to get the Center's personal programming at all. Because what they were doing was getting you to pay to have someone help you remove unwanted attitudes from your life which had been holding you back. If one could create an attitude of analytical non-partisanship in one's own mind - stemming from this peace of mind concept, and if one were then able to change one's attitude just by assuming the attitude one wanted - then there was no reason to have to pay someone else to help you with it.

"So the whole premise of this supposed monopoly through this cult was based on Rhino making money by getting you to pay for something you could do for yourself all along. What a con!"

Dr W: "Are you made bitter by this?"

Me: "Well, yes and no. All this was by choice, as their PR and Legal are so ready to point out. Sure, anyone can get scammed. And people only get what they ask for and to the degree they work at it. So where I put some 20 years into this cult, what I got out of it is just something I need to figure out. I've studied all this stuff and know it better than most. So with this crack I've found the whole of it will have to be re-evaluated and sorted out.

"But this means that all the use of temper and 'outrage' to get something done or attended to by the current management, as well as when Rhino was running it is suspect. It certainly isn't any way that people in general try to get along with each other. But in the Center management, it is requisite to be able to withstand a dressing-down. I talked to one of their ex-staff who produced their shows and acted as liaison between the cult staff and the union regulars who ran the auditorium. He said they couldn't understand how anything got done. He told me they would see someone lose their temper and drop their load on someone, then that person would get themself back together and later unload on someone else. They didn't understand what was going on or why.

"I didn't either, until now. That was the simple corporate culture of the cult management. It doesn't make sense outside the cult, which seems to be some sort of internally inbred system that can't be applied outside of that situation. And that says a lot. Enron imploded due to this same problem - their solutions didn't match real-world scenarios. Other companies whose management becomes cancerous can linger on for years.

"But look at how I describe them: cancer, inbred, implosion. So I am bitter - a bit. The only thing I would use to turn this around is the point that I should turn all this to my advantage somehow. I know a great deal about how people work, in and outside of that cult. Once I get established, I will have to deal with all this data and see how I can make a living from what I know as well as what I want to do and like to do.

"That is what should cheer me up. I can force myself to have a better attitude on the Center, but this would never be other than a forced attitude. The real scene would be to confront and isolate why I got into that mess to begin with and then separate the workable from the nonsense. This will have to be through simply isolating each datum and testing them in real world use. Those which don't work will have a reason for not working, some basic natural law that they violate. So the examination will lead to discovery of natural laws which the universe is actually based on.

"You know what? This uncovers what I was looking for when I found the Center: an underlying system which would start explaining basic situations on this planet. Rhino just did some preliminary sorting of data, but unfortunately destroyed his notes, so other people can't follow along - to stand on his shoulders as he stood on others. Essentially, one has to trace back his statements to see where they came from and test each one to figure out. A lot of work. But since I've already gotten all this homework done through those 20 years, it shouldn't be much more to simply take it the rest of the way out.

"Who would this be of use to? Anyone who wants the data. Essentially, this scratches my own itch. If I can write it up well, then others might find it useful. The trick is, again, to see if what he wrote about writing matches up with what is workable in the real world.

"'Cause that's where I'm headed, the real world."

Dr. W: "Seems to make sense. Does that sort it out for you?"

Me: "So far, so good. I'll let you know in a couple months after I've been out there."

Dr. W: "Well, I'll be around when you need me."

Me, rising: "That's for sure. Thanks, Doc."

Dr. W: "Sure thing. See you around."

I turned and walked out. Dr. Winston returned to organizing the copious notes he had made.