Among the Intellectualoids
McLean, Donald M. & Grubbs, Kenneth Elvin Jr.
Among) the Intelleetualoidsi by D.M. MMcLean Kenneth Elvin Grubbs, Jr. The new Los Angeles Convention Center, one of Mayor Sam Yorty's final monuments, a remnant of those days before this city...
...even take off our shoes if we like...
...Carol returns...
...Mischievously, he wonders if all this captain-of-my-soulstuff is not a little right-wing...
...She asks some of us why we came...
...They usher the neophytes to chairs and, join the gloom with their rapturous beams...
...As we walk into the windowless room we are greeted by the "Hi Ken, Hi Don" est volunteers, wearing the Hare Krishna, I've-found-the-truth, 500-watt A Carnival of Solipsists smile...
...For that Grubbs was waiting 26 years...
...Thank you...
...I don't want it...
...Carol understands, and all those smiles, nods, and spontaneous hugs would not be wasted on one if there was no hope...
...I'm completely neutral...
...Now feel the chair you're sitting on...
...rub your hand around it...
...Ken is with Pat, trying to make repairs...
...Griff moves in...
...Maddeningly, there is even applause among the introductees—a good many of whom, at least fifty per cent, it turns out, are evangelistic returnees...
...Don is leaning back on his umbrella...
...the problem is that people get stuck acting the way they were, instead of being the way they are...
...how you felt about it...
...What color did you think of when you thought of the rug...
...Volunteer Griff asks Don if he is going to sign up...
...And what about Ken...
...Landon has stylish close-cropped hair and an oatmeal-colored V-neck sweater...
...the unenlightened asks...
...Close your eyes...
...Think of the person sitting to your left...
...The months go by...
...Most all do before we are dismissed, three hours as est introductees...
...If no one is sitting to your left think of the space...
...Pat tells us to get comfy...
...And then Seligson, who took such pains to show her skepticism, surrendered...
...hip and semi...
...Pat asks Ken...
...Y'know, I have a five-year-old daughter, and I love her dearly...
...Rosenberg left his wife and family many years ago and fled to San Francisco, where he ran through his cerebral blender: Zen, yoga, Dale Carnegie, touchie-feelie, gestalt, Scientology, ad infinitum, ad nauseam...
...But first he addresses the introductees, whom he has had raise their hands...
...That's derivative: Werner von Braun and Ludwig Erhard, see...
...We've not come prepared to learn people should take responsibility for whatever happens to them...
...rub your feet over it...
...Writes Seligson: "All my buttons were being pressed furiously: Hitler and the jugend (my god, that kraut name of his), mass hypnosis, the Messiah, mystical cultism, Elmer Gantry, Charles Manson and his army of idolizing murdermachines...
...Official est trainer Landon, with that same kind of exuberant choreography reminiscent of the Up With People troupes, runs down the center aisle and lands on a stool...
...Erhard flips the ontological coin and it lands with Newman face down...
...Not that they can tell you anything about est, merely how it changed their lives...
...But then it is so hard for the dunderheads to "get it...
...Okay...
...Pat can't explain the unexplainable...
...Why must everyone go through est...
...I mean, if he really feels it...
...Laing, Alan Watts, and the other pop gurus...
...I don't need it...
...Think of its presence...
...Brown...
...An unexpected lunging hug almost topples them over...
...The world doesn't need you...
...The est volunteers pounce on us...
...Actually, I have no feelings about you...
...Pat smiles and nods understandingly...
...If that's where you're coming from," she hums...
...Ken, laboring under the impression, er, belief, that questions are supposed to get answers, asks Pat if she thinks est development might just possibly represent an historical return to the "inner-directed man," of David Reisman fame...
...A process is an awareness exercise used throughout the training...
...In fact a contrary type might understandably wonder if "est," which stands for both the Latin "to be" and Erhard Seminar Training, is actually a new branch of flaccid Protestantism...
...Pat chirps...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 9...
...He informs that he's been through it all: analysis, gestalt, I'm OK-You're OK, Esalen, Sandstone, primal therapy, et al...
...Sometimes people get the notion," Erhard lectures, "that the purpose of est is to make you better...
...See how valuable est is...
...Thank you...
...No," he says, "you could refuse simply because you're a righteous ass...
...A silly article by Marcia Seligson in New Times gets recycled in Cosmopolitan ("And I love Werner Erhard...
...somebody else answers...
...Believe it...
...also carrying umbrellas...
...She begins her touching autobiography...
...It is true, and est manifests it, that twentieth century man is unaccustomed to thinking ontologically, that he aches for a philosophy, any old philosophy, of being...
...he is Perry Como reincarnate...
...Hey, I thought of orange too...
...We return to our seats...
...Now think about someone you loved...
...upon seeing such dandy dudes, sporting umbrellas...
...Presently, a tidal ovation rushes through the three hundred sitters, all of whom, save the handful of introductees, have "had the experience...
...No black-cloaked daddy tied you there...
...Fine," she says...
...What about this side of the room...
...of how you feel about them...
...of the ceiling...
...Of course there are times when one shouldn't be too analytical...
...Now think of the rug...
...now the taxpayers have fittingly provided a permanent shelter for every contrived Damascus experience, secular or not so secular, that wings its way into town...
...she winks...
...Following an ethical system destroys the capacity for self-responsibility...
...Unde:stand...
...Not good enough...
...If that's where you're coming from...
...Get it...
...Relax...
...of the people in the room...
...Tonight," he begins, "we're going to learn more about what's so...
...Aimee's ghost breezes through here, too...
...She never loved anyone...
...successful...
...Now that's est...
...Now they spend their time, like one volunteer who drives up from San Diego three or four nights a week, witnessing their pristine egos, or joining an est postgraduate seminar, one being the What's So series...
...Well, it doesn't appeal to me, Don answers...
...You saps probably think there is some objective reality...
...You don't come to probe, analyze, or think about it...
...You reject an action or a way of thinking simply beThe Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 7 cause it isn't you...
...Afraid of life and experience...
...The est message is found in a two-weekend, sixty-hour-plus package of experience-itdon't-think-it, devised by Werner Erhard...
...The smile and understanding nod...
...Modern humankind's problem has been trying to live up to some belief system, established by the nation state, the church, or the tyrants mom and dad...
...Think of the chair...
...Look, I hope you didn't think I was being smart with all those questions, trying to show off my intelligence or something...
...It is not...
...Another understanding nod and soul-penetrating stare...
...Their testimonials are spontaneous, interminable...
...She does not understand...
...That has nothing to do with you...
...John Denver devotes a big part of his Rolling Stone interview far-out!ing about est...
...By now we get the point...
...Nope, we're not ready for that...
...As she sticks on name tags we lie (boy, do we need est) that we journeyed from the East, as do many truth seekers...
...A teenaged girl testifies she quit her job and hitchhiked down from Oregon just to be here...
...Thank you...
...Thank you...
...Look how you stand: arms folded, uptight, ascetic, possibly constipated...
...But I don't make those judgments...
...Who is she to judge...
...The essence of a liberal education, John Henry Newman said in so many words, is that it is better to believe all things—if the choice must be made—than to doubt all things...
...Pat is a volunteer, a happy trooper, an exponent of 'est (it saved her marriage, as her husband, TV cowboy actor Gary Clark, corroborates from the back of the room...
...Of course you don't, for you're perfect exactly the way you are...
...you asshole...
...a belief system is a myth, created by knowledge or data without experience...
...The purpose is to put you in touch with your feelings...
...Doubt all things...
...For Seligson, he was either Gantry-Manson or God...
...Not good enough...
...One of the techniques to "put you in touch with yourself ' is called a process...
...can you feel it through your shoes...
...Interesting: the selfsame esters who talk about self-responsibility decline volitionally to rein the horse...
...He "got it," that is, the mystical est experience, one day while driving the freeway...
...Alas, try that one out as a quip in front of an ester and it will pass right over his or her private little head...
...Try again...
...Thank you...
...A blank look passes her face and the room chills a few degrees...
...His co-esters have not only cleared their heads but their bookshelves of Charles Reich, Wilhelm Reich, R.D...
...We've heard what goes on in these grad sessions: the trainer berates individual esters ("you turkey...
...But est supersedes it all...
...And why should a trainer feel sorry for you...
...The new Los Angeles Convention Center, one of Mayor Sam Yorty's final monuments, a remnant of those days before this city of the locusts was washed clean with Bradleyism: The Winter-nationals auto show '75 is downstairs...
...during marathons in which no one may leave his chair...
...Do you think he needs it...
...Quoting Erhard, "Consciousness is all there is, there isn't anything else...
...Me too," says another...
...One doesn't know whether to be proud or offended...
...Again a query: "Is the lunatic, experiencing himself to be Napoleon, in touch with reality...
...I happen to think you are perfect exactly the way you are...
...of how you felt when a stranger came into the room...
...Think of someone who loved you...
...Oh, but you are intelligent," Pat reassures, "of course you are...
...Don and I are working in tandem on an article aboutest...
...Orange...
...A brillo-coiffed, Jean West-dressed practitioner congratulates Ken for his questions...
...No, I don't need it...
...But have you signed up...
...Let's take a break, f chrissake...
...either-or...
...The eyes tell her different...
...An eyebrow elevates...
...They are generally young, twenties and up...
...You are the world...
...8 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 Pride and fear were the problem, you understand...
...For some inexplicable reason the Southern California ethos has always been Anything Goes—except males carrying umbrellas, even if there's a fine mist, like tonight...
...Knowledge without experience is "a state of hypnosis, automatic and totally non-nurturing...
...More than you," he responds...
...But, y'knoN,v, she doesn't need me and I don't need her...
...upstairs, or rather upelevators, is the What's So Seminar...
...The City of the Angels has always been Aimee Semple McPherson territory, a place of revival tents alternating with used car dealerships planted under the shadow of the Teapot Dome-enriched University of Southern California...
...Must you be living in error if you decline...
...God is the Operative Solipsism...
...So you happened to be lying on the subway tracks when the IRT rolled in...
...She understands —oh, how she understands...
...Thank you...
...Attend: The registration girl voices surprise ("Wow...
...That's because Erhard, or Jack Rosenberg in another incarnation, wanted a Germanic-sounding name to advance his new (it's all new now) psychology...
...asks volunteer Carol, 30 years old, successful businesswoman, divorced...
...The people on this side of the room thought of orange," says Pat, "how interesting...
...Valerie Harper accepts her Emmy on television, not reading a telegram from the VC, but giving a special thank-you to Werner Erhard, a "profound influence...
...But let me tell you about self-responsibility," she says, "of being in charge of myself...
...It's quite obvious...
...That is why the forty-thousand-member preremnant have paid their $250 for 18 hours of masochistic denigration and self-stroking coaching about how to "ride the horse in the direction it is going...
...That wasn't so bad, was it...
...Does one have to be Chinese to write about China...
...somebody shouts...
...Ethics ditto...
...The craving for ontology goes exploited...
...Right and wrong are so much eyewash...
...Who cares...
...Erhard is merely reintroducing, in his revivalist, capitalistic, semi-articulate way, an ontology to this incredibly revivalist, capitalistic, semi-articulate generation...
...Question time...
...think of its color...
...Always "needed" but never "was...
...Cards are passed out...
...You're the turkey who said you had to be there...
...Pretty Pat, once a performer of some kind with Jack Benny (she says), leads us to a conference room...
...You pushed some buttons...
...We're to be separated, because we haven't the inoculation it takes to get into the hard stuff...
...Oh, that's fine...
...Last chance to sign up...
...It didn't seem just cuckoo, it seemed damn dangerous...
...And I love Werner Erhard...
...Postprocess discussion...
...No matter, though...
...of the walls...
...Think of a string holding you from above...
...He surrendered to it, Rosenberg-Erhard did, and all things have been added unto him, including forty thousand paid-up disciples, among them Yoko Ono, John Denver, Jerry Rubin, and Valerie Harper...
...Take a deep breath...
...How do you explain to somebody like her that Erhard's none of that...
...It is not exactly the right attitude, one soon understands...
...How can you write an article if you don't go through the training...
...The applause sounds like prize-time at the Saturday matinee...
...Now think of the person to your right...
...Believes Erhard: "Belief is a disease...
...And why, by the way, if we're supposed to feel comfortable with ourselves, did Jack Rosenberg change his name...
...Your experience tells you who you are...
Vol. 9 • November 1975 • No. 2
