Apology 2007
The following question
may seem at once both silly and naïve to ask and also arrogant and presumptuous to answer, but since I’ve
been accused of being all these things and more over the years, why not air the question and attempt an answer?
It is my website after all, and my domain (it is called a “domain” name isn’t it? :-).
This also allows me to make something of an apology, for what it is worth, and this may at least serve as some sort
of therapy for me after all I’ve been through since 1964. It also seems to be THE question of the
new millennium as well….why did we not do more to prevent what is happening?
The question is:
“If you’ve known about this all these years,
and how critical and important it is, why didn’t you do more about it by now?”
I have always wished
I could have done more all of my adult life. As circumstances were though, there was just no way I could
have done much differently given all the complex variables of my life growing up, as far as I know. The
truth is that I am very sorry now that I did not do everything in my power to do more, and if I could do it all over again
I would make many changes. Looking back to when I was 12 years old and settling into a new and strange
community as a shy and awkward boy, there does not seem to be anything else I could have done upon first hearing about The
Big Bang Theory and “knowing” it was a very bad idea. I was just a kid. Plus, I
did not make the connection between this bad idea and world events for many years after that. This website,
such as it is, marks a new era in my life when I at least have a voice out in the world after all these many years, and that’s
a start in a new direction for me.
One main factor also, though I am not recognized for this trait so much now,
is that I was always a very extremely shy person most of my life growing up. I cannot exaggerate this fact.
I was literally the shyest person in the room almost everywhere I went and in everything I did. One
main reason I left Junior College and went for a career in advertising was that I could not (really and truly had an inability
to) pass Speech Class. Both times I tried to take a Speech Class it was a miserable failure.
The first time I literally blanked out in front of the room (I know I walked up and stood behind the podium and talked
and then walked back to my seat, but the whole experience was a blank like having been drugged). The second
time I just do not recall at all as it apparently was too horrible to remember. After years of courses,
est seminars, and workshops, I finally returned, to the same class in the same classroom, almost 20 years later, and completed
the class with flying colors, even singing a song at the end. I then went on to earn my BA and then my MA and today
I am not nearly as shy as I once was. This is still a powerful factor for me however.
Another factor related
to how much or how little I have done over the years relates to a series of persons, often men about my same age, who went
out of their way to belittle, berate, harass, and condemn me and my work and ideas. From comments such
as “There are more of Matt’s dumb ideas” (from a boss), to “You’re lucky to live in a time when
you can question such things” (a professor), to the Chair of my graduate school department beginning an in house graduation
ceremony with the words, “THERE ARE NO GENIUS’S HERE!” to people just plain laughing out loud at my work,
these events combined with my innate shyness and self doubt to make for devastating setbacks. Looking back
at these petty remarks, possibly related to bruised egos unable to consider anyone rising above their high states of intelligence
or mighty accomplishments in any way, or threatened by something they could not understand which might change the nature of
what they believe in, etc., I am indeed sorry I took these things, and people, so seriously. I do
take responsibility retroactively for reacting so strongly and for not walking around them and sticking to my guns and forwarding
my work anyway. This was in fact my fault, even if at the time it did not seem that way.
I am also sorry for not doing more in these cases for the people who came after me and fell into the influence of these
folks. That is a very sad thing indeed.
One last factor I’ll mention in answer to the question
of why I did not do more having known these things over all these years is that, in a way, I did not really “know”
these things as fact at all. I was hypnotized and asleep in many ways just like the rest of us into thinking
that things were going to be alright and that things could not really be so bad and ”THEY would not let things get too
bad, right?”, etc. It has only been in the last few years that things have really been coming together
and that my doubts have subsided and my confidence grown.
In some real and spooky ways,
the world is like this new film coming out, “Invasion” (apparently a sort of remake of “The Invasion of
The Body Snatchers”) in that one must really watch what one says to whom wherever one goes for fear of being seen as
out of the norm or as a danger to the popular Paradigm, etc. It’s a spooky scary world out
there and I have just made the decision to risk my very life to launch this site and say the things that I do.
It’s that important to me and I am not willing to sit by and just no nothing anymore.
I am at once sorry I
did not do more, and I am proud that I am still alive and forwarding my work against the odds and in the face of extreme prejudice.
Now, in 2007, I am most definitely not alone in answering this question, “why did I not do more?”, and
these are both exciting and horrific times in which to be alive.
And, now I will try to do more.
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