Chapter 5

Meet Doctor Winston

While he came with both Pita and Phil's enthusiastic approval, I was a bit doubtful that Dr. Winston could help me. What did I need of some therapist or psychoanalyst - mostly these guys have a reputation for getting nothing done except sucking down government funds.

I pictured him as wearing a corduroy jacket, one of those academic ones with the patches on the arms. Comfortable, but not a "power suit" so common to policitians, Secret Service and those associated with the "men in black."

No, Dr. Winston went out of his way to be approachable, able to be trusted. While he wore a tie, it was a knit one with some sort of pattern known only to the maker of the yarn, browns and tans in it. His collar was always unbuttoned under that tie, something any man would appreciate, given the inconsistent fit of dress shirts off the rack or discount bin - something Academia was used to as budgets went to buildings and administrators, not instructor's pay.

His office was surrounded with shelves, but these were haphazardly stacked and piled with various data he was interested in researching or developing as a thesis. It didn't seem that any actually matching sets were placed on these shelves, either in pieces or together. Off in a corner, I saw he had some small volume history of the United States, but this was surrounded by paperbacks, stacked two-deep on shelves. Lots of manuals on all sorts of things. A shelf of cassette tapes, but on the opposite wall from his stereo - itself dusty. His computer was stacked with other knickknacks and his framed diplomas were in wrappers on the shelves, a few framed pen and ink illustrations on the walls but otherwise it was all hobson-jobson shelved books. The only breaks were the windows (which had louvered shades), the entrance door, a small closet and some hooks to hang his jacket and a collection of dusty hats. These were mostly ball caps with the school's insignia on them (obviously given as a gift, since these were perfectly shaped) next to well-worn and worn-out cotton ball caps which had been used for gardening, hiking or some other outdoor work. One felt fedora - shades of Indiana Jones - took a prominent position, but this as well was not immune to a patina of dust.

"Welcome, Herbert." Dr Winston rose as I entered. "Glad you could come by; Pita told me you were coming soon."

I shook his offered hand, "Thanks, but I think its more their idea than mine."

Dr. Winston: "Some distrust of seeing me?"

Me: "To be honest, yes. Shrinks don't really appeal to me."

A small chuckle rattled from the doctor's throat, "That is to be sure. But I'm no head-shrinker. I'm only some minor professor in a backwood school who is a specialist in various arcane and esoteric studies. I'm more your adviser than anything else. Studied Biology in school and got my sheepskins after authoring a few unreadable papers in some exotic theorizing which got my degree, but scant praise from the few individuals who ever read those things. Published, yes - but that's too much about me. Have a seat. Want some hot chocolate? Cookies?"

He extracted a thermos from behind one pile of cross-stacked papers on his desk. From one of his drawers (which appeared to stick a little) he produced one of those gift tins of cookies that he had been given at some point and kept around for any visitors.

"No, thanks."

A short silence ensued until the doctor cleared his throat, "Um - well. OK. Let's get something straight. You're here because you have a problem, or several, which you could use some help with. I'm here because you wanted me to be. Just like Pita and Phil, I've always been around to help you - you know that voice in your head, like Socrates' daemon? But now, it is probably best for you and all of us that I take tangible form to best help you in your travels - or travails, perhaps." He chuckled at the pun.

Declining both, I sat. "So I'm you and you're me? Is that how it works - I'm talking to myself?"

Dr. W: "Well, essentially, yes. But you have to admit that walking into an office talking to someone else is a helluva lot better than walking around on the streets talking to yourself.

"Let's get down to brass tacks. The ground rules are these: You can talk about anything you want. The general principle of thought is that anything can be compared to anything, so we are only going to examine what you consider valuable and what you are comparing it with to determine its value. But like two armies, the datums you compare will form their own methods of engagement - they will make their own rules for the comparison. Let's try this out. Go ahead, tell me something about yourself."

Me: "Well, I'm driving away from my 20+ year job in LA working for a cult and coming home to my parent's farm in Missouri. But my life hasn't been simple - in fact it's a bit of hell and I hope to sort it out."

Dr. W: "And how has it been hell?"

Me: "Well, things didn't work out as I expected..."

Dr. W: "Hold on right there - let's take this one thing at a time. You'll have to fill me in - that's the great part of talking to someone else: they're an empty cup to fill with your story. Now, what were you expecting?"

Me: "Solutions to the puzzles of the universe."

Dr. W: "No small apples, eh?"

Me: "No, but I bought into what was promised and kept finding various explanations for things which kept making sense."

Dr. W: "And you left because..."

Me: "Things stopped making sense. If this guy Rhino had all these solutions, then how come his own organization wouldn't follow these. How come they were all friendly, but could then treat others like manure?"

Dr. W: "How did you come up to the view that they treated others like manure?"

Me: "The way I was brought up, plus his own writings and lectures said that people should be treated with respect, should be treated as one would want to be treated."

Dr. W: "And what standard of treatment were you holding to?"

Me: "Well Rhino worked out that all of the virtues could be worked on logically from the Golden Rule, that you only needed to practice these daily and then you could attain habitual use of these - they'd become part of your daily operating basis."

Dr. W: "That seems noble and sensible. What did you find in conflict with that?"

Me: "How people acted, especially in personnel matters. I could understand where people hadn't read or understood what Rhino had written, or personally had some block to treating others around them well. But people who had been around as long as I had, and those in management, should be far more versant with his basic writings and be able to apply them to any circumstance. Yet I found people transferred based on vacuous reasoning, 'justice'being applied and upheld which violated basic tenets of their rules. Logical actions not taking place because of local or management-authored arbitraries."

Dr. W: "Did you find a simple explanation for these, something would explain them as a basic statement?"

Me: "Well, Roger helped me with this a bit. Basically, Fear was more important than established policy. Underneath this was a certain issue, which was junior to other policies, which stated that people were free to act in anyway they chose - as long as they got the job done. Now that one key issue then tended to throw out all other rules in the book. It was an excuse to dramatize. But only management had that rule. Lower franchises didn't operate from that."

Dr. W: "Where did this issue come from - was it some compiled work, who wrote it?"

Me: "That's the kicker - Rhino himself wrote it. So it had validity as policy for the Center and all the franchises below it. But beyond this, issues which came later - like the statement about that Golden Rule and Virtues - weren't held to be senior to those earlier issues, which was true in most other cases. In other words, they were selectively operating on issues which supported a corporate culture which induced fear as a control factor over personnel. Jobs weren't particularly secure, nor innovation - raise your head and it could get shot off. Old poems were requoted by Rhino which acted counter to this: "There's so much good in the worst of us; and so much bad in the best of us; it benefits none of us to talk about the rest of us." Yet, as with the virtues Rhino had laid out as a moral code for the Center, this was ignored in treating people with respect, kindness, understanding, patience, working to train them, working with them as an individual to sort out their difficulties. They worked to find out someone's best job in life - through one of their personal programmes, yet then wouldn't work to get that person situated in that job and keep him there.

"I was better off outside the place, since this was too ingrained. If the datum that 'Rhino had everything figured out' was true, and if the basic policies he had established were true, then these people weren't following his basic policies and the whole thing was off the rails."

Dr. W: "Well, thanks for that. Now, were those two premises you laid out true?"

Me: "That's a whole 'nother scene. The answer to both of those premises were No. But this came to me only after I started getting on the Internet - outside of the cult's control - to sort this out for myself. Rhino had studied widely and read many, many sources. However, he seldom attributed credit to these sources - violating that very quote of Newton's, which said something about being able to see farther because he stood on the shoulders of giants. So he set himself up as a single source and created a dogma which narrowly defined a 'road out,' which actually was never written up before he died. Looks like he cherry-picked the best datums to fit into this personal theory of how the universe operated, which is fine in and of itself. But then he told his followers that his was the only correct view and that all the multitude of books and papers he had studied were all booby-trapped, that he alone had found the 'single way out.' Anyone working to study these various subjects themselves could be ostracized for doing so, being held as mixing these other studies with Rhino's works and so diluting the distilled materials that the Center was based on.

"This is how the whole thing fits into the definition of a sociological cult. They don't want you to read or listen to anything besides the carefully scripted work of that belief-system. Those who do are shunned.

"The kicker at the bottom of the pile is that besides not leaving the keys to the kingdom, Rhino also tried to shut the door on others who had also discovered very practical methods of salvation. Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Lao-tzu, Confusious, Plato, Socrates and many, many others developed practical systems for personal enrichment. Those who worked to create shuttered societies are pretty much relegated to the ashes of history and are mostly unknown today. That's the end result of cults.

"Honest reflection and discussion are those things which create worthwhile advancement for humankind. Critical name-calling and destructive criticism only create enmities and wars. The object of any real discussion or problem-solving is to find a more optimal solution."

Dr. Winston had stopped taking notes, the room was again silent except for the muted ticking of a clock hanging amid the cluttered walls of his office.

He spoke to break the silence. "Well said, well thought. There's a lot to work over here, but I think you've made some progress in your travels."

Me: "Thanks, Doc. Seems to make more sense to me, now that I've said it. Like you said, I've got some work to do. Have to check out some Phoenix stories, since I'm going to have to rise from those bridges I've burnt."

Dr. W: "Well, we can cover it another day, anytime you feel like it - I'm just a step down the hall in that active mind of yours."

I rose with him, seeing that our session was over. "Thanks again, Doc. Thanks for your help."

He extended his hand, which I shook, "Herbert, the appreciation is all mine. You did the work and I got to learn something from it.

Smiling, I turned to leave. Dr. Winston had sat again, amidst his cluttered desk, taking a cookie from the tin to nibble on while he sorted through the notes he had taken. I left him to his absorbed thought and closed that heavy door quietly behind me.