ON HAVING A PhD, AND BEING CALLED DOCTOR
By: Tom Mahon
Tags: Academia, Spirituality, Wisdom, War, Technology

In the 1990s, before it became fashionable, I spoke widely on the convergence of engineering and spirituality. That is, harmonizing scientific and technical capability with moral and social responsibility, as we become an increasingly tech-centric society.

I was drawn to this subject because on my way to work every day in the 1980s, I drove past Lawrence Livermore Labs, where they were developing more powerful nukes, as well as the Star Wars program (SDI), as part of Reagan’s arms buildup.

I wondered how the good people living in these comfortable homes managed to spend their days designing WMDs, then coaching a Little League team after dinner? Will such questions eventually find their way from the Livermore Valley to the adjoining Silicon Valley where I worked?

With such a subject that I had been independently studying in my work life for 20 years, and with little if any academic attention on this growing convergence, I soon found myself speaking at the AI Lab at MIT, Harvard Divinity School, International Solid-State Circuits Conf, Embedded Systems Conference, St Patrick’s Catholic Seminary, United Religions Initiative, and later at Oxford and some European peace conferences.

It was thrilling to be invited to such prestigious venues. And I also spoke at senior citizen centers and junior high schools.

What struck me as odd, however, was when organizers at professional gatherings would put a Ph.D. after my name in the printed program.

I’d remind them that I don’t hold a doctorate. They’d reply they had to add that to show I was a serious, certified scholar, even tho all my content was from independent study. I’d opine that if what I had to say didn’t stand on its own, all the degrees in the world wouldn’t help. They would win half the time, and I would win half the time. It was not worth contending over.

But in a way it was, I see now. Who do we believe when new fields of study open up every week? Who is an authority on a discipline with no history. When Einstein wrote his peer-reviewed paper introducing his Theory of Relativity in 1905, it contained no references to prior work. Because there had never been any. So score one for Einstein.

But I also remember how President Nixon always made a point to refer to Doctor Kissinger when announcing the latest atrocity in Vietnam or Cambodia. As if Kissinger’s academic degree sanctified the secret bombing of countries we were not at war with.

I stopped speaking after March 2003. Mostly in disgust back then realizing nothing’s going to change our ways.

I had been invited by the U.S. State Dept to address 150 Fulbright Scholars from other countries at a conference in San Francisco. The subject was “Appropriate and Inappropriate Uses of Technology.”

I spoke to my State Dept “handler” that morning and said I was having trouble with the assignment. His boss, Secretary of State Collin Powell, had recently lied at the United Nations making the final case to launch shock and awe on the people of Baghdad on March 20 that year, just because they had the bad fortune to live under the wicked Saddam Hussein who until recently had been our friend and ally in the region.

“This to me is an inappropriate use of technology,” I said. “But I am reluctant to bad-mouth my homeland before 150 future leaders of their countries. What would you recommend?”

“Well, Tom,” the handler said, “we want you to go out there and be controversial… but diplomatic.”

The scales fell from my eyes. I had to fight a gag reflex. In a blinding flash, I understood that authorities are only authorities to the extent we give them authority over us. I saw and felt the weight of the coming waste of a failed, costly war, conducted by fools and sycophants. And here we are 17 years later and still bogged down there, even as George W. Bush is being rehabilitated.

I re-wrote my remarks on the fly. I encouraged the students to find someone to trust to be their Merlin, or Obi Wan or Gandalf or Dumbledore. Not a publication or institution or professional body. But rather an insightful elder, man or woman, who can help them to learn to filter all the blather in the world that will wash over them in their time.

And if they find such a one — and be careful in that search — realize that even as they come to lean on the wise elder, they must also begin the act of separation. The Romans had an expression for that day: Ave atque Vale, hail and farewell. I salute you for all you taught me, and I will use that knowledge well on my own path to seek my own wisdom.

I don’t have a copy of my talk; I made it up as I went along. I’m not even sure what I said. Or what effect, if any, it had on these very bright young people. But when it was over a young man from Senegal approached me and said, “You, sir, will be my Dumbledore.”

I don’t have a doctorate, and am unlikely to start work on one now. But better than that, one young man from Africa saw fit to make me his Dumbledore. As a nun was for me 65 years ago, now long since departed. But in time that made all the difference in the world.

© 2020, Thomas Mahon