Copy of a letter to a recent job applicant

You refer to us as having a "strongly individual culture".

One of the forms which the censorship of my (and our) ideas has always taken it to represent them as a belief system instead of a non-acceptance of elements in the almost universal implicit belief system of the modern ideology. So any indication that one fails to support or reinforce currently approved attitudes may be greeted with the question, "Do you have a belief system in common?" Criticism of the modern cult of psychological degradation, or expositions of what had been established about inherited intelligence before it became an unfashionable idea, are associated with ideas of elitism, Fascism, and people who allegedly set up secret societies for cultivating feelings of superiority. This makes expressing what one does think very time-consuming and proceeding to disentangle the unanalysed assumptions is only delayed by having to start by rejecting totally unfounded suppositions.

One of us, while taking an Open University degree in psychology, had to write an essay on the circumstances in which "intervention" was appropriate. She did not (as I might have done) go so far as to suggest that "intervention" was never appropriate, but did mention a need for caution in view of the possibility of misinterpretation of the situation by the interveners. Even where the situation was, in its most obvious features, correctly diagnosed, human psychology is complex, and the mechanical application of a "remedy" might do more harm than good.

She was awarded 80% for the essay, but her tutor wrote on it that if she persisted in this "political stance" she might be marked down in the exam. It is interesting that any reference to the fallibility of agents of the collective is now regarded as a "political stance".

A newspaper recently had the headline, "Is the middle class the new under-class?" If and when I can get through the censorship sufficiently, I will publish some detailed discussion of the various ways in which that is true. The concept of "middle class" still correlates to a considerable extent with the approximate 3% of the population formerly, and perhaps still, described as "gifted" children or "very superior" adults. Please note that this tiny population, still more the even tinier one with IQs over 150, is heavily outnumbered by the rest of the population.

Is it likely that the interests of this vulnerable minority will be protected in the prevailing ideology of a "democratic" society, in which political power is gained by presenting in a acceptable form (however garbled and rationalised) policies for which a majority of the population will vote?

For decades now, I have sometimes said, as a bitter joke, that it was possible to account for every feature of the prevailing ideology as designed to make life maximally difficult for somebody exactly like me. Again, when I am able to force some books through the censorship barriers, I will try to make the case for this in detail.

By the prevailing ideology I mean that which started to become dominant with the inception of the Welfare State in the late 1940s, and the expression and influence of which has been becoming more florid and explicit ever since. By now it is almost impossible to meet a person outside of here who does not subscribe to a good many of its dogmas, implicit or explicit. So my first problem in getting to know someone is not that I have dogmas of my own which I wish to put across, but that I am surrounded by a very strong, and virtually universal, anti-individualistic culture.

This certainly has a bearing on the difficulty of obtaining new employees or associates. I have attempted to indicate the inapplicability of some of the most obvious assumptions on the website, but this probably needs to be amplified, as I don't think people accept it and come with the idea that they can override our outmoded aims and objects and strategies for pursuing them.

Apart from anything else, how well people are willing or able to work in a socially acceptable situation is no guide to how well they will work here, especially as they become more aware of our old-fashioned outlook.

This is why we think we need fairly long association with a new person before we could be committed to employing them on a potentially permanent basis.