Pondering pearls and swine and today's world
A biblical phrase which I ponder once again is the one "Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them beneath their feet and turn to rend you," one of Jesus' wisdoms. Seeking its messages for myself, it is clear that it intensively pertains to my efforts re my ideas for improving life in so many ways, often through special applications of technology. Along the way, there have been some expressions of acknowledgment and appreciation of my creative ideas (as one co-author of a US Patent; and once by getting made a full Electronics Design/Development Engineer even though non-degreed) but the vast majority of responses have been much to my discouragement. Returning to the wording of the "... pearls before swine...," seeking more understanding for my real-world experiences, gradually I saw that swine would be hoping for feed, maybe some tidbits of corn grains distributed by my hand in front of them, yet pearls would seem like mere pebbles to them, and become infuriated at one's mischief at them, giving pebbles instead of tasty corn. That I knew the pebbles were precious pearls of great potential worth, gets lost in the interpretations by the hungry swine even though I think they could trade a few pearls for great heaps of their desired edible corn. So, pulling this teaching into the world I have found in my walk some 2,000 years later, first re-defining the problem as observed, then offering some solution idea, several thoughts appear:
1) The world does not beat a path to one's door to buy your creative goodie from you, although you might return home some day and find it gone and erased from your files. People nowadays seem to require advertising sales pitches and some store to buy at, otherwise, there is nothing of interest to them. And, potentially competitive concepts must be hidden and destroyed, apparently they think.
2) Working in some lowly position (such as an engineering technician) for a corporation so as to have the opportunity to show them one's creative ability through ideas for new products for them so as to make things better for everybody, amazingly got automatically virtually destroyed when walking in through their door, when the "Employment Agreement" had to be signed as a condition of employment, a legal document that declares that all of the employee's ideas and inventions freely belong to the employer (and the employer had no responsibility toward the creative ideas.) Sign it or don't work; no work thus no way to pay bills or buy groceries. So, sign and hope they have better sense in reality. Nope; it generally was pearls before swine result. Lots of my concepts and ideas got ignored or rejected, and rarely did they later acknowledge that many years later the very thing I had earlier offered, was made into working reality by someone else, who additionally gave no credit to me. The company people were totally absorbed on the track on which they started, and to them the "employment agreement document" was just to ensure no one stole their pre-loaded company goodies. It all maintained the illusion that the company personnel, particularly management, were the only ones capable of improving the company's output, thus guaranteeing security in their jobs. Don't rock the boat, it is hard enough for them to keep all their ducks in a row.
3) So I began to put my ideas out on a computer network (GEnie, Space and Science library) and then when internet access came to me, I put my ideas online, Earthlink starting in 1996, then eventually my own domain too. I found that people out there either considered my ideas as potentially upsetting to their delightful life, and/or implied that I was attempting to horn in on their paycheck-producing job field, particularly to my amazement the Space Station field; filibustering loaded the chats I attempted to get going re my ideas, even back in the late Eighties.
4) So I thought that writing technical papers for conferences which were proclaiming interest in fields that my ideas and conceptual designs pertained to, would get interest from those who functioned on the idea level. Several conferences would accept abstracts even from those not of the field professionally, the papers concepts would be judged on their content, not the prior visibility of the author. So I learned to write my ideas in the form of a professional technical paper, and with minimal resources, even had to use a poster shareware software to prepare my first published paper in "camera ready" form, each page was a two-column poster (Wet Launch of Prefab Habitat Modules, SSI, 1995). Previously, in 1985 I had attempted to get Aerospace focused on the great potentials of new transportation concepts, not just mine but those of Loftstrom and Hyde among others, by giving testimony before the National Commission on Space, and found interest by Commissioner Dr Paul Coleman of LANL; yet it all vanished by the time the report was published by the NCS. I then processed those ideas and digested them and built anew to form a new concept which seemed cohesive enough to give industry a place to look for great new things to do, and eventually called it KESTS to GEO. I wrote of it on GEnie, then on my internet freebie earthlink website, then submitted it to the RAND system, told it to various groups like the SSI team here in LA and the ISSS LA chapter. Polite noticing then they went on their prior way. Presenting it to the SSI in 1997 at Princeton resulted in the strangest response, and their failure to publish my paper on KESTS, in 1997, additionally embarrassing me there and subsequently to my mother who in her ailing last years had given me the $3,000 it took to do the conference paper effort, sadness all around. Not until 2000 did I get a technical paper formally published and presented at a related technical conference, that of ASCE's Space 2000 conference. Another paper published in ASCE's Space 2002 conference, this time as the 2nd paper in the proceedings, labeled an emerging technology ("Kinetically Supported Bridge Vehicle Lift To GEO", ASCE Space 2002 Robotics 2002) and I began to guess that it was some knowledgeable personnel at LANL that were of some help to me. Then the news began to have reports of some mudslinging at LANL, stuff any company would have if intensively "investigated", but LANL was being targeted. ASCE deigned to allow me to have published another paper in their space conference at Houston in 2004, however, the conference management had changed and corporate political interests seemed supreme; by that time, "Space Elevators" had branched off and were focused on the anchored tether variety as if it were the only way, and not inviting me or my papers there, even though my unpublished 1972 paper "The Mooncable: A Profitable Space Transportation System" (which showed the feasibility of a constant stress anchored lunar tether through L-1 made of fiberglass) had many of the concepts now applied to anchored earth tether designs now that eminent availability of tether material strong enough for an earth anchored tether space access elevator appears on the technological horizon.
So, where were the present-day manifestations of the "pearl trampling and turning to rend you" phenomenon, I ponder. My ineptitude at public speaking made me an unimpressive presenter; my lack of a degree made those who depended on their high academic achievements for status, resented my attempts to do what they had not done; implications that I must be crazy or have stolen the ideas from someone, me a mere electronics engineering technician sometimes unemployed even, perhaps even through some security breach at some big corporation or government facility, since I had referred to a Hyde document by title, at the 1997 SSI conference paper (the unclassified Hyde document was not understandable by me in my brief look at it as provided by a retired Huges engineer also a futurist, but the document appeared related to Hyde's "Starbridge" presentation I had attended in the mid-1980s at an L5 Society meeting, thus a reference for my 1997 KESTS paper) and apparently it was preferable to some authorities to infer that I had stolen the ideas than to let it be known that it was not they who created the conceptual design ... maybe they would lose their credibility and their great jobs? Worse yet, KESTS to GEO would displace existing aerospace launch vehicles and many of their functions for access to space from the ground, big upset to big jobs, out of their control: no way will they let that happen, Control is what they do best, leverage. My Asperger's Syndrome problem made it easy for frame-ups and mudslinging to keep me looking like the "bad guy" in incredibly diverse ways, while my KESTS to GEO with Applications Enabled was kept stifled and hidden, waiting for this older man to get dead or worse ... yes, "trampling with their feet and turning to rend you" fits very well to the observed phenomena. Reaching out through 2,000 years via the Bible, Jesus helps me comprehend the problem. And it is said that correctly defining the problem is half the solution.
"Pearls" I have had abundantly, ones which could enormously help civilization quickly and make fortunes for those who implement them: enabling transportation to build facilities that would provide abundant clean electrical power worldwide, huge reduction in greenhouse effect, ability to totally recycle the worst of toxic industrial wastes, and permanently opening the doorway to space for the masses, not just for energy and resources but also for building vast cities orbiting the Earth, easy commute between there and the ground... all just too very unordinary to be noticed and adequately checked out for feasibility, it seems, by a population being scared by threats and thus unable to rationally build their future.
Is it good enough for me to proclaim to the empty air: "I tried", don't blame me when the lights go out permanently, or first you stifle in your own terminally fouled nests? I wonder if the wise teacher Jesus thought of doing the "I tried" thing, too. Not good enough, got to keep going, do one's best; the world will provide the stops.
An answer appears to be in the understanding of the various basic temperaments with which people experience their lives; and to encourage educational processes that give equal time to both sides of the brain (big-picture vs detail oriented sides) and seeking the context that links them.
Good Luck from Jim Cline. Thanks and Cheers....
1) The world does not beat a path to one's door to buy your creative goodie from you, although you might return home some day and find it gone and erased from your files. People nowadays seem to require advertising sales pitches and some store to buy at, otherwise, there is nothing of interest to them. And, potentially competitive concepts must be hidden and destroyed, apparently they think.
2) Working in some lowly position (such as an engineering technician) for a corporation so as to have the opportunity to show them one's creative ability through ideas for new products for them so as to make things better for everybody, amazingly got automatically virtually destroyed when walking in through their door, when the "Employment Agreement" had to be signed as a condition of employment, a legal document that declares that all of the employee's ideas and inventions freely belong to the employer (and the employer had no responsibility toward the creative ideas.) Sign it or don't work; no work thus no way to pay bills or buy groceries. So, sign and hope they have better sense in reality. Nope; it generally was pearls before swine result. Lots of my concepts and ideas got ignored or rejected, and rarely did they later acknowledge that many years later the very thing I had earlier offered, was made into working reality by someone else, who additionally gave no credit to me. The company people were totally absorbed on the track on which they started, and to them the "employment agreement document" was just to ensure no one stole their pre-loaded company goodies. It all maintained the illusion that the company personnel, particularly management, were the only ones capable of improving the company's output, thus guaranteeing security in their jobs. Don't rock the boat, it is hard enough for them to keep all their ducks in a row.
3) So I began to put my ideas out on a computer network (GEnie, Space and Science library) and then when internet access came to me, I put my ideas online, Earthlink starting in 1996, then eventually my own domain too. I found that people out there either considered my ideas as potentially upsetting to their delightful life, and/or implied that I was attempting to horn in on their paycheck-producing job field, particularly to my amazement the Space Station field; filibustering loaded the chats I attempted to get going re my ideas, even back in the late Eighties.
4) So I thought that writing technical papers for conferences which were proclaiming interest in fields that my ideas and conceptual designs pertained to, would get interest from those who functioned on the idea level. Several conferences would accept abstracts even from those not of the field professionally, the papers concepts would be judged on their content, not the prior visibility of the author. So I learned to write my ideas in the form of a professional technical paper, and with minimal resources, even had to use a poster shareware software to prepare my first published paper in "camera ready" form, each page was a two-column poster (Wet Launch of Prefab Habitat Modules, SSI, 1995). Previously, in 1985 I had attempted to get Aerospace focused on the great potentials of new transportation concepts, not just mine but those of Loftstrom and Hyde among others, by giving testimony before the National Commission on Space, and found interest by Commissioner Dr Paul Coleman of LANL; yet it all vanished by the time the report was published by the NCS. I then processed those ideas and digested them and built anew to form a new concept which seemed cohesive enough to give industry a place to look for great new things to do, and eventually called it KESTS to GEO. I wrote of it on GEnie, then on my internet freebie earthlink website, then submitted it to the RAND system, told it to various groups like the SSI team here in LA and the ISSS LA chapter. Polite noticing then they went on their prior way. Presenting it to the SSI in 1997 at Princeton resulted in the strangest response, and their failure to publish my paper on KESTS, in 1997, additionally embarrassing me there and subsequently to my mother who in her ailing last years had given me the $3,000 it took to do the conference paper effort, sadness all around. Not until 2000 did I get a technical paper formally published and presented at a related technical conference, that of ASCE's Space 2000 conference. Another paper published in ASCE's Space 2002 conference, this time as the 2nd paper in the proceedings, labeled an emerging technology ("Kinetically Supported Bridge Vehicle Lift To GEO", ASCE Space 2002 Robotics 2002) and I began to guess that it was some knowledgeable personnel at LANL that were of some help to me. Then the news began to have reports of some mudslinging at LANL, stuff any company would have if intensively "investigated", but LANL was being targeted. ASCE deigned to allow me to have published another paper in their space conference at Houston in 2004, however, the conference management had changed and corporate political interests seemed supreme; by that time, "Space Elevators" had branched off and were focused on the anchored tether variety as if it were the only way, and not inviting me or my papers there, even though my unpublished 1972 paper "The Mooncable: A Profitable Space Transportation System" (which showed the feasibility of a constant stress anchored lunar tether through L-1 made of fiberglass) had many of the concepts now applied to anchored earth tether designs now that eminent availability of tether material strong enough for an earth anchored tether space access elevator appears on the technological horizon.
So, where were the present-day manifestations of the "pearl trampling and turning to rend you" phenomenon, I ponder. My ineptitude at public speaking made me an unimpressive presenter; my lack of a degree made those who depended on their high academic achievements for status, resented my attempts to do what they had not done; implications that I must be crazy or have stolen the ideas from someone, me a mere electronics engineering technician sometimes unemployed even, perhaps even through some security breach at some big corporation or government facility, since I had referred to a Hyde document by title, at the 1997 SSI conference paper (the unclassified Hyde document was not understandable by me in my brief look at it as provided by a retired Huges engineer also a futurist, but the document appeared related to Hyde's "Starbridge" presentation I had attended in the mid-1980s at an L5 Society meeting, thus a reference for my 1997 KESTS paper) and apparently it was preferable to some authorities to infer that I had stolen the ideas than to let it be known that it was not they who created the conceptual design ... maybe they would lose their credibility and their great jobs? Worse yet, KESTS to GEO would displace existing aerospace launch vehicles and many of their functions for access to space from the ground, big upset to big jobs, out of their control: no way will they let that happen, Control is what they do best, leverage. My Asperger's Syndrome problem made it easy for frame-ups and mudslinging to keep me looking like the "bad guy" in incredibly diverse ways, while my KESTS to GEO with Applications Enabled was kept stifled and hidden, waiting for this older man to get dead or worse ... yes, "trampling with their feet and turning to rend you" fits very well to the observed phenomena. Reaching out through 2,000 years via the Bible, Jesus helps me comprehend the problem. And it is said that correctly defining the problem is half the solution.
"Pearls" I have had abundantly, ones which could enormously help civilization quickly and make fortunes for those who implement them: enabling transportation to build facilities that would provide abundant clean electrical power worldwide, huge reduction in greenhouse effect, ability to totally recycle the worst of toxic industrial wastes, and permanently opening the doorway to space for the masses, not just for energy and resources but also for building vast cities orbiting the Earth, easy commute between there and the ground... all just too very unordinary to be noticed and adequately checked out for feasibility, it seems, by a population being scared by threats and thus unable to rationally build their future.
Is it good enough for me to proclaim to the empty air: "I tried", don't blame me when the lights go out permanently, or first you stifle in your own terminally fouled nests? I wonder if the wise teacher Jesus thought of doing the "I tried" thing, too. Not good enough, got to keep going, do one's best; the world will provide the stops.
An answer appears to be in the understanding of the various basic temperaments with which people experience their lives; and to encourage educational processes that give equal time to both sides of the brain (big-picture vs detail oriented sides) and seeking the context that links them.
Good Luck from Jim Cline. Thanks and Cheers....
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