Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

Chapter 5. “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking”

Ricketts developed this essay during the early years of his friendship with John Steinbeck, a period also marked by collaborations with Joseph Campbell, Henry Miller, and other friends and colleagues. At the heart of Ricketts’s desire to articulate non-teleological thinking is his struggle to put into language that which by its very nature eludes definition . Deeply philosophical, Ricketts’s essay is at times convoluted, but the significance of non-teleological thinking is of primary importance to his unified field hypothesis—as he says in the essay, it is the “modus operandi” through which he interprets life. Through “is thinking,” Ricketts believes, an individual may better accept and understand the world and ultimately “break through” or transcend. As I note in the introduction to this book, Ricketts and Steinbeck’s 1940 expedition to the Gulf of California was inspired in part by their desire to integrate scientific inquiry with non-teleological thinking, and Steinbeck later included a revision of the “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” in Sea of Cortez . The seventeen-page version included here, marked “Typed by Toni, March 1941, original to John,” is likely the draft the latter worked from while writing Sea of Cortez. • • • • • • • • • Typed by Toni, March 1941, original to John. Non-teleological, rational, or “is” thinking, as contrasted to the more usual cause-effect methods. An inductive presentation (“How does a chapter 5 “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” 119 hen know the size of an egg cup when she lays her egg?” [Heard on the Chase & Sanborn Hour, October 1, 1939]). During the 1931 depression, we lived close to a destitute and rather thriftless family. My wife used to remark that they looked to the county authorities for support because they were shiftless and negligent, that “if they’d perk up and be somebody, they’d be alright.” Her viewpoint was undoubtedly correct enough so far as it went. But I used to wonder what would happen, assuming that people of this sort could and would change their habits, to those with whom they would exchange in the large pattern—those whose jobs would be usurped, since at that time there was work for, say, only 70 percent of the total population, leaving the remainder as government wards. My attitude had no bearing on what might be, or was to be in the future , or could be if so-and-so came about; it merely considered conditions “as is.” No matter what the situation might be with regard to the ability or aggressiveness of the separate units, at that time there were great numbers necessarily out of work, and the fact that those numbers comprised the incompetent or maladjusted or unlucky units is in one sense beside the point. No causality is involved in that; collectively, it’s just “so.” The units may be blamed as individuals, but as members of society they cannot be blamed. Any given individual very possibly may transfer from the underprivileged into the more fortunate group by better luck or by improved aggressiveness or competence, but all cannot be so benefited whatever their strivings, and the large population will be unaffected. The 70–30 ratio will remain, merely with a reassortment of the units. And no blame, at least no social fault, imputes to these people ; they (or some similar units) are where they are “because” natural conditions are what they are. And so far as we selfishly are concerned, we can rejoice that they, rather than we, represent the low extreme, since there must be one. I So, if I am very aggressive, I should be able to obtain a position even under the most depressed economic conditions, but only because there are others, less aggressive than I, who serve in my stead as potential government wards. In the same way, the sight of a half-wit need never depress me, since his extreme, and the extreme of his kind, so effects the mean standard of sanity that I, hatless, coatless, often bewhiskered, thereby will be re120 “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” garded only as a little odd. And similarly, I cannot enthuse over the success manuals that tell our high school graduates how to obtain employment , there being jobs only for half of them! This type of thinking unfortunately annoys many people; it may especially arouse the anger of women, who regard it as cold, even brutal, although actually it would seem to be more...