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Part Three: From Aviator to Avatar
- University of Iowa Press
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Port Three FROM AVIATOR TO AVATAR No sooner had Lawson returned from the great flight of his airliner than he eagerly added to all the burdens awaiting him a true labor of love-the writing of a celebratory account of the flight, of its place in aviation history, and of his life and ambitious plans. The Airliner and Its Inventor, Alfred W. Lawson was self-published by Lawson in 1921 under the name of "Cy Q. Faunce." (The choice of pseudonym was apt; say "Cy Q. Faunce" rapidly enough and it comes out sounding like "sycophant." If this little joke was intentional, it was the only instance of self-deprecating humor ever to appear in Lawson's writings and speeches.) In this adulatory book Lawson not only spotlighted the greatness which he already had achieved in aviation but prophesied more Lawsonian prodigies to come: "But we believe he will do more, and if he lives another twenty-five years-and his strong athletic appearance and clean, regular habits give every indication of his doing so-then we can look forward to some of the most remarkable achievements and creations that the mind of a super-man is capable of devising." Lawson did live another twenty-five years-in fact, nearly nine more than that number. His forecast of future "remarkable achievements and creations" was on the mark, too. Although his greatest work in aviation was soon behind him, other realms of activity remained to engage the Lawson genius. In- 112 FRO M AVIATOR T0 AVA·T AR deed, even as he wrote in 1921, he was preparing to stake a claim to greatness in another field. A novel physical theory-a total replacement for orthodox physics -had been simmering in Lawson's mind for decades. The failure of his aviation activities in 1921 gave him an earlier-than-expected occasion to get it down on paper, a task which took up Lawson's next three years. The result was two treatises-the earliest works of Lawsonomy . In the preface to the first of these volumes, the irrepressible Cy Q. Faunce hailed Lawson as the "Wizard of Reason" and accounted his scientific achievement as greater than those of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, whose teachings were "like school boy information" compared with Lawson's. Lawson's airline dream still beckoned alluringly, however, and because his superliner project brought him back to the pursuit of the dream from 1925 to 1929, he sometimes referred later to his 19211924 season of writing as only a brief "vacation from his business affairs ." By the early 193os, however, Lawson realized that his forced vacation had, in fact, been a providential event. In his view, it was God's way of putting him on the path to the true purposes of his lifeelaborating his intellectual discoveries into a comprehensive scientific, moral, and religious system and, through the promulgation of this doctrine, leading humanity upward a notch on the evolutionary scale and toward a perfected social life. Once Lawson had abandoned his aircraft ventures forever in 1929, he was preoccupied exclusively with these goals for the rest of his life. Lawson's movement toward messiahship came in two phases coinciding with the first and the second halves of the decade of the 1930S. He kicked off the first phase with publication in 1931 of Direct Credits for Everybody, which specified a "perfect economic plan" for dislodging "the financiers" from control of the American economy and ushering in utopia under the capitalist system. For sure, here was another "remarkable achievement and creation." By virtue of his plan's liberating effects, Lawson proclaimed himself to be the "New Emancipator." To gain support for his plan, Lawson also founded in 1931 the Direct Credits Society (DCS), which soon had a large, far-flung membership . In keeping with these heady circumstances, Lawson adopted two [54.81.58.140] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:08 GMT) FROM AVIATOR TO AVATAR 113 other dramatic self-characterizations in this period-"The People's Coach" and, even grander, the "Man of Destiny." But all the while that Lawson pushed his Direct Credits program and built up the Direct Credits Society, profound changes were occurring in his perceptions of his role and his goals. What lay behind his changing perceptions at mid-decade was his resumed attention to Lawsonomy, which he worked away at even while he built up the Direct Credits Society. Lawson's most "remarkable achievement and creation" in the 1930S was the completion...