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About my Qualifications:
May 6, 2002:
Although it is somewhat related, this is not part of my philosophy
series. It is, in fact, a response to a recent request from a
reader. I have concluded that others may have an interest in my
response to her query. Here is her e-mail and my reply.
Mr. Gaffer- I am using your article that "Food is
a Weapon" for a policy debate case and need to know your
background or qualifications in quoting you as a source. If it
is not a problem, could you please email me some information.
Thank you, Ms. X
Dear Ms. X:
Thank you for your query regarding my qualifications. It is not a problem at all. In fact, I am always pleased to receive input. I am more than pleased when the input provides a subject for another essay. My reply may be a bit more than you expected because it brought to mind another project I am about. That is the generation of my philosophy.
I suspect that those who read it will also wonder about my credentials. Since I see no reason to write this twice, I will expand on it to address that issue. It will become an essay for my entire readership. Of course, you will become anonymous. I don't think I will surprise anyone by revealing that Willie Gaffer is my pseudonym. Regardless of the name I write under, however, my background remains.
By Qualifications, I am assuming that you mean my qualifications to write, advocate, and criticize, because that is what I do. I am happy to report that I have none. By any academic, official, or formal standard, I am singularly unqualified. I have no wish to mislead you or anyone else about that. I have no need to do that. However, allow me to carry this discussion a bit beyond that naked fact.
First a word about the essay in question. Since I wrote "food as a Weapon" quite a while ago, the first thing I did was revisit it. When I did, I found one thing which I must recant in light of current developments. Although what I wrote was valid when I wrote it, one thing is no longer valid. At that time, the Mexican government was in the hands of international criminals and was in serious need of reform.
That situation has recently changed dramatically with the election of Vicente Fox. With his leadership, I believe that reform is now possible. I consider him to be a good man and the best hope of Mexico for a real democracy. In no way would I advocate his overthrow. On the contrary, I would urge our government to support him in every way possible. To be sure, that would include providing him with food for his needy citizens. As far as neighbors and allies are concerned, I would much rather have a self sufficient democracy on our southern border that a week dependent nation. As to my other points in that essay, I will stand by them.
Now, about my academic qualifications, I have a technical diploma in electronics. I have also taken a very large number of classes and intense seminars, all of a technical nature. However, I have no formal degrees of any kind. In fact, I owe my faculty for independent thinking to that lucky accident. I did not waste a great deal of my time in universities getting my head filled with nonsense by liberal professors who have no real work experience. So, my formal education is limited indeed.
My real education came from two other sources. First was that good old school of hard knocks. I acquired a degree of audacity from that school. As you may know, the penalty for failure in that school can be quite grim. Worse yet, there is often no reward at all for passing. You just get by; and yes, "With a little help from my Friends."
The second part of my education came from intensive, unsupervised reading. In that, I have had some of the finest tutors in the world. In no particular order, here are a few of the minds which have nurtured mine. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, John Steinbeck, Gurdjieff, Abraham Maslow, Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Rogers, Harvey Jackens, William Shakespear, John Locke, Rene Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson, Fritz Perls, Ram Dass, Mark Twain, and Robert Frost.
As to my biography, it is no secret. It is posted on the Wesoomi website under "About Wesoomi." Other items about me are posted with the information about the books I have written, also on the website. The books are The Gaffer's Shorts, The Siege of Acheron, and No-Count-Charlie. I will not reiterate any of that here. To find out more than that about me, you must read The Gaffers Shorts. In a very real sense, that set of short pieces expresses who and what I am. Getting it is easy. All of the Wesoomi books are being discounted now in a new pricing policy.
So, if your situation is such that you need to have me somehow qualified before you can consider the value of what I say, you have come to the wrong well. I will most certainly disappoint you. I have not been endorsed or certified by any authority, nor do I wish to receive such a blessing. If what I say decreases in value to you for that lack, I must disappoint you. Either my discussions are convincing and valid or they are not. This has nothing to do with whether or not I have been duly anointed.
Let me add a bit more on approval while I am here. If approval from "authority" is what your life is about, you cannot help but end up with a mouth full of ashes when you come to the end of it. I know whereof I speak. I have spent too much of my own life in that mode. I am a slow study and it took me many years to realize that my sucking up was producing nothing but pain.
On that road, I could never get enough approval. I finally
realized that the only important approval would be the one I gave
myself. Only then was I able to begin saying what I was about.
Shakespear said it best, "Unto thine own self be true."
Again, thank you for your input and good luck in your debate.
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