Nido’s office looked like something out of a Victorian novel, like it belonged to a wealthy man who’d recently returned from a great safari. It was crammed with knickknacks and gadgets on every free ounce of shelf space. There were book cases, and maps all over the walls, as well as flags that draped down, and busts of what looked to be classical Romans and Greeks. The whole thing reminded me of an 18th century home I’d once seen in London, called the John Soane house. The room was stately and all of the furniture was made of oak, on top of the main desk, there was an old time world map. This was in fact the only clear thing in the room, except the floor. The strange thing about this room is it looked like every bit of it was planned and perfectly well kept; it just had a lot of stuff to put there. The book shelves were filled with books on engineering, art, woodworking, glassblowing, every kind of hobby or trade one could think of and there were of course many books in foreign languages I couldn’t make out the titles of, because they were in Latin, Greek, German, Arabic, French, Japanese and Mandarin. I could only kind of read some of the German stuff, but Kelly spoke a few of these languages so, told me what the ones in Latin, Greek and a little of the Arabic meant.
Besides the elegant desk with the map on it, were a couple of roll top desks, a sort of umbrella vase with various posters and rolls of paper coming out of them. On the walls, beside the maps and flags were some beautiful paintings of idealic and picturesque landscapes, many with classical scenes on them, some of which I was familiar with, others not. This office, as you might guess was simply immense; it looked like it took up half the house. I thought I’d sit at the desk, and perhaps discover what was in the drawers. While I did this, Kelly skimmed through some of the books, especially the ones in foreign languages. In the drawers to this grand old desk were many files. I opened them and found a lot of Nido’s financial records. It appears that Nido was something of a financial genius by his records. These records went quite far back to the 60’s and it seems he caught every financial trend before anyone else. I remembered being a little curious about how a man who was working as a janitor in his 70’s could have $50,000 saved up and not simply want to retire. As I looked through the records it dawned on me, that Nido actually had a great deal more wealth than this $50,000. I came to understand that he spent much of his money supporting his hobbies, and the fifty grand was only what he had in available assets, that is, electronic assets in the bank. Nido had predicted and invested in many great companies before they were big, such as Microsoft and companies of that nature. He seemed to have great stocks and was quite astute at understanding human nature, especially economically.
After I looked through a lot of these files, I decided I’d go through some of his other books, I found a shelf that seemed to have only books that Nido himself had written. Fortunately for me, they were in English, though they seemed to be pretty old. It seems that he wrote a novel of Chaucerian like short stories called The Secular Monastery, about a young college student who goes off and discovers a monastery devoted more to the brilliance of mankind, rather than God. I also found a book about Nido’s philosophy on life, it was rather interesting, where he wrote a series of essays on nearly anything you could think of. He wrote about random things that came to his mind, topics big and small. As I turned through the pages I found it all fascinating and I can try to write the gist of a few of the more interesting topics here.
Concerning religion- Nido talks about how he is a full fledged agnostic here, and how he doesn’t understand how anyone can have a belief in a god there is no evidence for, but oppositely, he doesn’t understand how anyone can deny a being of this magnitude, equally with no other evidence than their own perceptions… especially when such beings are supposed to be beyond our limited senses. He postulates that there is much beyond what we can see and feel, and that the reason we can sense what we can is it is essential for our survival. On the other hand, Nido didn’t embrace a divine being or beings without any questions at all. He speculates that the origins of the universe are something he would never personally know in his life time. If people did know such things, it might settle the question better. He then proceeds to write some hypothetical formulas for how to start a universe himself, but says they are far too experimental and outlandish to realistically try out. Thus he leaves it that he is truly an agnostic in all things metaphysical and temporal. He also mentions that if he had to adopt a particular belief in God, he would certainly be a Deist, because he doesn’t understand how a divine creator would want to interact with the subjects he made.
Concerning politics- On the realistic side of things, Nido describes himself as an international isolationist, opting for independence in every form from all other countries, except by means of trade. I suspect this was actually fairly representative of his own personal demeanor concerning other people. Nido also says that he supports the least amount of government interference into people’s daily life as possible. Nido also mentions a proposal for a strange new system of government where there would be an elected dictator every eight years. In this system, there would be a board of eight members who would convene in a secret location when called upon by the chairman of that group to either overthrow or to execute that dictator for poor use of his power. The dictator would have absolute authority over everything and everyone, and would be expected to delegate a good deal of his labors to subordinates, whom he could fire at any time for corruption or misuse of power.
The dictator, according to Nido, would be forbidden to do a few things and would be ejected from office if he didn’t comply by a few of these rules. The main thing the dictator could never do was try to discover who any of this mystery board of eight were, and if he did find any out, they could both be ousted from their respective offices immediately. Also, they would be granted immunity from all of his actions, until a jury could resolve whether or not the actions of the board member were justified. A board member would be forbidden from becoming dictator. Whenever there was an impeachment hearing for any given dictator, the board members would have to have a 3/4ths majority to eject the dictator from office, and a unanimous decision would allow execution. The means of execution Nido describes were particularly gruesome and cruel, but he had hope that by demonstrating such means, the dictator would try to treat his subjects all well, since he would never know who was to ultimately be his judge, and perhaps means to his horrible execution. Nido goes on further to say that he found that republican democracies were inefficient due to needless rhetoric that necessarily goes with them. He also says that he felt they were too corruptible by special interests, but with a dictator who would live in both fear and love of his subjects, he would always try to act the best way possible for all concerned. Because, at least in theory, the board members would be all over the country in almost any walk of life.
Nido, continued by recommending that board members be as young as sixteen and as old as sixty-four, and that the classes of the country were represented proportionally. Nido gives no other specifications to demographics, except saying that women and men should make up equal portions of the board, and also be elected as dictator, but that would be a majority decision.
I found all of this quite fascinating, and thought of Nido’s utopia in real life. I was doubtful to its actual practicality, but found it charming that he would take the time to consider how to run a country well. I personally never tried to create my own form of government as a pure mental exercise, so thought Nido’s system was a fairly good idea for a purely theoretical thing.
Concerning education- Nido suggests here that education is perhaps one of the most crucial things in life for success and understanding, yet he goes on to write that education is not for everyone. He says that there should be certain elements of education that are equally disbursed to everyone, and that anyone willing should certainly receive any kind of education they choose. Nido says he himself received fairly low marks in school, because he never had the self motivation to actually learn what he wanted to. He also recommends that education be seen as more of a thing for leisure, ultimately, rather than as for a profession, though both applications should be remembered. He says that students, especially young students would do well to learn certain things earlier, such as many foreign languages and more complex mathematics. He also recommends here to allow younger students to choose more elective classes in a time after school, but these classes must be of the student’s choice (with some gentle encouragement one way or other by the student’s parents).
He recommends taking the grading aspect out of schools, especially in older classes, and to demonstrate proficiency in any given subject, aptitude tests should actually be given at the place of application. Meaning, there should be no tests or grades given for attendance or anything of that nature, except at a job for example, where the actual relevant material will be tested. Nido says, that this would take much of the pressure off of both teachers to teach to a certain subject, giving more leeway to interesting rants rather than focused dreariness, and that students would further benefit by listening due to interest rather than duty. He suggests also that students, who don’t want to be compulsorily educated, certainly shouldn’t beyond a very low age, or perhaps twelve years old or so. Giving students a choice would allow for better labor stratification in later years, which Nido feels is a good thing and allows allotments in life that will better sustain society without as many labor crises.
I personally disagreed with Nido on a lot of these points, but remember as a child myself, hating the grading systems, because I felt they were too subjective in many regards, and stifled creativity.
Concerning love- Nido talks about how he sees love as being something that really confuses him. That said, he says he has both a theoretical perspective and a realistic perspective based on his experiences. In theory, Nido says that love is a purely biological driven thing for the reproduction and rearing of offspring. He suggests that the average length of time for love should be about seven or so years, enough for a child to be born and raised to a more independent (Paleolithically speaking) age. He then follows this up by suggesting that in reality, this doesn’t quite work, and based on his experience, it is very possible to love someone for a lifetime, even without seeing him (or in his case her) again, even after several years. He goes on to suggest theories of why certain people fall in love with each other, and outside of the primitive aspect of women wanting the most successful and powerful males, and men wanting the most fertile and attractive females, there must be some more to it. He suggests that anyone could in theory fall in love with nearly anyone else, providing that all of the superficial aspects match up. He goes on to write that what makes something special between people is the self projection they force onto their partners with their subconscious minds, in order to secure an idea of those people and the need to preserve them (for their offspring’s sake) as much as they would need to preserve themselves. He also suggests here that it is truly impossible to ever really know someone to any extent as well as one knows himself. What he then says is that this self projected image covers the more tacit bases of his partner’s personality, like the inner thoughts and such, that he himself can not, and will never be able to really know.
Nido goes on to write that in his own experience, he finds love too hard to cope with, and that the sorrow and disappointment it causes are ultimately far too overwhelming for his poor soul, so finding love in what you do, and abstaining from people is perhaps the best way to really find happiness. Nido goes on to speculate that other people try to find too much solace in the idea of love and don’t give enough credulity to themselves. Nido goes on to describe different kinds of love and their functions, starting with child to parent love, where a parents loves and respects his parents for instinctual reasons, including total dependence for material possessions. Then there is adolescent love, this he calls the discovery of love, and it is perhaps the most tender love, besides parent to child, that there could be. He says that adolescent love is the first exposure to many new and raw hormonally based emotions, and thus is among the most potent of loves, especially when combined with sex. Then there is mature romantic love, which has by this time been jaded a bit from the adolescent counter part, this is the love that is more established and pragmatic in as far as longevity of relationships and actual living goes. He says that this is perhaps the ideal love in many ways. Next he talks about parent to child love, where it is perhaps the harshest (in pure theory to Nido) love, with both the best rewards and the worst heartaches. He says this is a reflection of self love, combined with ultimate worry and concern for someone else. Next is self love, and this he says, will always be the most intimate and fully developed. Finally, he suggests charitable and platonic love, the love for strangers you don’t know, and those you are not intimate with on a familial or sexual level. Nido recommends this is the easiest love to cope with and also the most rewarding for what is put into it. He says that even this love can be quite painful, so ultimately for him, though loved a great many people throughout his lifetime, he finds love to hard and chooses to not to indulge in it, for fear of pain.
Concerning sexuality- Along many of the same lines as love, Nido finds sexuality to be a very difficult topic, partly just due to the fact that he doesn’t fully understand all of it. He suggests that sex should be a recreational venture and performed among any people that deem it worth it ultimately to engage. He goes on to write that sexuality is something that should be less criticized and openly embraced in society overall. He finds prudishness to be puritanical and ignorant on the one hand, but ultimately understands a lot of it on the other. He says that with the increased use of sexual technology like birth control sex should be engaged in quite freely, but ultimately he is confused by the very real and frustrating feelings of jealousy. He goes on to suggest that if there is a much more open understanding and acceptance of all sex from the start of life, that such jealousies and frustrations, and therefore strange fetishes and sexual abuses would severely lessen. He goes on to describe most people as being bisexual to some extent, mostly leaning toward the heterosexual side, and says that homosexuality is a deliberate choice by most of its practitioners. He has no problem with this per se, rather he goes on to chastise the cultures of the sexually repressed as seeking attention and ultimately making a culture from the elements of nothing except stereotypes to promote singularity and ultimately isolation. He goes on to state that the homosexuals of the ancient world were ultra masculine and rarely dramatic the ways they have been since Oscar Wilde.
Concerning human achievement- this seemed to be of special importance to Nido, and he says though he rarely engages with others, he finds infinite potential and good in the human race as a whole. He says that mankind will use its creativity and sophistication to ultimately better himself and the world as a whole, as is profitable for either. He goes on to say that he finds infinite potential for the forth generations to come, and that he would do anything to see the world of five thousand years hence for only a few days. He claims that as mankind has grown thus far in technology, so has his understanding and ability to create solutions. He suggests that though neither the future nor the actions of mankind will ever be perfect, they will ultimately continue to improve for as long as humanity continues to exist. He goes on to site that the improvement and collaboration over the years is now increasing at an exponential rate, and that he sees nothing but glory and hopefulness for people of the future. It is to this great spirit, Nido draws a lot of his quite admiration for people and where much of his own achievement and invention comes from. He does show slight doubts of pessimism as well, but says that all growing pains into new technologies and achievements, no matter what their causes of creation were, will take time to get used to, and people will ultimately try their best to exploit and abuse any system to their own personal advantages.
Concerning hardship- Nido claims that hardship is something that ultimately helps better people in general, using the adage that which doesn’t kill me can only make me stronger. He goes on to suggest that those who are lucky enough to be born into a life free of most hardship, should use the advantages they have for the betterment of themselves and others ultimately, and never let it go to waste. Nido professes an admiration for those who suffer hardship cheerfully, and a slight disdain for those who grumble through some of life’s more common difficulties, including himself. He says that difficulty is a great thing in some ways because it forces mankind into achievement and it is best to be exposed to many kinds of hardship in youth so as to be better immune to it in the future. He does say that certain difficulties and hardships people ought never to deal with, such as abuse or violence, especially to children. He says it is because of hardship that he achieved many of his greater works, and figured out the ways to sustain himself and his person. He is grateful for it, though the pain was often still overbearing to him.
Concerning work- Nido suggests here that ultimately the way to salvage one’s soul is through work. Nido goes on to say that he must constantly be working, even when he is trying to be idle, or he would go mad. He further explains something I was quite curious about with him after learning of his fortune. He says that working and keeping oneself busy, allows one to focus his attentions more productively. This is why he became a janitor those many years ago, so that he could have some more mundane chore to allow his body to work on, while it focused the powers of his mind to the real questions and troubles that were bothering him. He says that by working, it gives one more validity to life and to achievement. He feels that creativity and work are the ultimate pleasures in life, as odd as that sounds. He says this because he suggests that one’s worth as a person ultimately comes from what one does, and it is a rare thing for one to be remembered in a purely good way by sitting idly watching a television. Show. Thus, he goes on to write that for him, work has always gotten him out of the hardest ruts of his life and that if he finds himself shirking for too long, he falls into a personal depression only work, (mostly on his hobbies) will get him out of.
Concerning morality- Morality, Nido suggests, is almost always purely relative, meaning it is far too fuzzy to ever really have an ultimate code of rules for which to live by. In one circumstance it may be prudent to act on a certain moral standpoint in the traditional way, and in another not. This Nido has a problem with, because it makes life more complex and less easy to understand. He goes on to suggest that morality should be built by a series of axioms that are indisputable in themselves so as to give a clearer understanding. He didn’t write any of the axioms he came up with in this book, but he did write some of the basic laws he thought would be more or less consistently acceptable. Basically, Nido mentions that what most has to be established are the semantic and therefore pragmatic applications of what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mean. ‘Good’, Nido goes on to suggest, are those things which benefit a person and his surroundings as a whole, and whatever is most beneficial to everything would be considered ultimately good. ‘Bad’ in contrast is what is less profitable to a person and the greater environment as a whole as well. The representations of good and evil illustrate their points, but not their definitiveness per se. What is more profitable is what allows the greatest degree of survival and comfort and self sustaining, and what’s less profitable doesn’t allow such things. For example, Nido writes, stealing a good deal of money takes away from the self sustaining and comfort of more people than just the one, and thus is necessarily evil, unless stealing for the one means his very existence or not.
I found this particular essay to be a little more confusing and difficult than most of his other ones, but it was interesting all the same. I think it was so confusing and difficult because I hadn’t really thought about it before myself and now, Nido had me wondering what good and bad really mean. I found myself wondering why something were considered good and others bad and who really decided such distinctions in the first place.
Concerning virtue- Virtue, Nido points out, is not the same as morality, but rather is a code to live by. It is more on par with the axioms that he suggested for morality and it ultimately makes one a moral person, by their own code of axioms or virtues, if they adhere to it. He goes on to suggest people from history who had certain virtues and axioms that may not agree with people of today or even of one’s contemporaries but ultimately made them a virtuous person if their virtues were true and sound. He talks about past dictators and how some of them had outstanding virtues in many regards but carried them out in a way that was less than sympathetic to others of their and our times. Nido says that virtues are things that every person should come up with ultimately by himself. Virtuous people, he postulates, will always be seen of people of strong character and sometimes shady actions. He does recommend that there should be a common set of codified virtues for all to follow and abide by, such as promotion of life and so on like that.
Concerning life’s complexity- Here is a very prominent issue to Nido and one that I don’t think he ever fully understood to his heart’s desire. He points out that the complexity of life is far too great for anyone to really reasonably understand or even tolerate well. He goes on to express his frustration with never quite knowing himself or anything fully. He speculates that in the end, if he is fortunate enough to meet a God, he will have many many issues brought up by that divine power that he simply hadn’t considered. He talks about how no one can really ever have anything truly figured out, because there is just far too much in everything. From the atomic structures and quantum mechanics governing things, to the more abstract levels of understanding of what each thing means to the universe and its surroundings. Although Nido is slightly confusing here, he tries to clarify by saying that he wishes he could simply think about each and everything in the universe and if he had enough time and mental capacity he would. His mind is set on understanding the basic laws of the universe and why they exist as they do. He is more fascinated by the place and time he has been set in life, and wonders how it will all ultimately go together. He suggests here that his greatest regret at the end of his life would be simply knowing and understanding less than he wanted to.
Concerning attention- This is an issue that seems to perplex Nido greatly, as it now does me as well. He says that attention is something he has often seen everyone ultimately seeking, especially those less secure with their positions in life than others. This, he points out, is especially true for girls and children. He says that he understands the basic reasons why, because they are at a time when they need to be attended to and affirmed as having worth in this lifetime, but it still confuses Nido that anyone seeks it in the ways that they do. He also confesses a curiosity at why the confirmation is so important, but then observes that perhaps being affirmed by others gives one hope and a reason to find their life valuable and thus to continue living in a worthwhile way as part of the community, or whatever one feels his function is. He goes on to suggest that young women ultimately seek attention, because they innately know their time of beauty and power will soon be over, and that using their wiles to seek attention is the best way to ultimately enforce and use their power. He calls this a sad fact of reality that he doesn’t see any foreseeable change in. He says that men on the other hand, are luckier in that they set the rules to be followed and that the power they confer on themselves, whether through socialization or nature, is self affirming enough. This system of validation, though not disdainful to Nido, is sad and inefficient. He said if it were in his power he would ultimately have people consistently reaffirm each other’s use and purpose in one another’s lives by having people be honest about their mutual dependencies.
I thought this was all a good point, and was happy Nido, could enlighten me on a point I had often speculated upon in the back of my mind, but never found myself articulating aloud.
Concerning regret- Before I go on to summarize what Nido said, let me just say that this was perhaps the most interesting point for me to read. I was very curious about what Nido would say on this subject as so much of his art and those letters had obviously been driven by a good deal of regret. Nido writes that regret is a fool’s errand, but that it could often steer one on a better path if taken correctly. He says that he had many regrets in his life, especially concerning his earlier love of Joy, and that for all this time, he knows he should have forgiven himself long ago of being a foolish kid, but he never did because he felt that the character he turned into was ultimately due to this. He goes on to say that regret can shape much of a person’s life, but that one should never dwell too much on it, so long as one doesn’t consistently make the same mistakes. His regrets always seemed to concern other people, so he figured that in his life it would be best to omit other people altogether and concentrate on the sorts of mistakes that would never really harm anyone else. He says, to this end, that he really loves people and wants to make them happy, and both not hurt, but more importantly not to be hurt by others again. He continues by saying that nearly every time people interact in a more than platonic way, some sort of regret and hurt will always arise from it.
I found this to be more enlightening of Nido than the philosophy itself, and I was actually quite happy to have stumbled on it. I may point out, that he actually wrote these articles for longer and made them more articulate than I did, but the points remain more or less the same. Nido had some very interesting viewpoints in all, and I don’t know if he ever actually wrote these essays with the intent of having anyone else read them, but I thought they were interesting enough. Some of them were several pages, others were only a sentence or two, but it was quite telling to a lot about his character and thoughts overall.
After finishing looking at this article, I found another book that made things seem to make a lot more sense from the hallway a few rooms back. As I picked it up, it read with a title called Niddish Mythology. I opened the pages, and found all sorts of wonderful things like, family trees of gods, and sketches of each one with a brief description. There was a pantheon of eight gods, a few of whom I was already by this point, slightly familiar with. Namely, I knew about Sapis, Jamalia and Klax. Here it gave a full account of each god and where he was born, and what he did and so on. Sapis, for example was born of the great ‘flash of life’ and gave birth to Jamalia, and together they bore four of the other major gods, and two came in from other sources. What I found most fascinating about all of this was that Nido had actually invented his own mythology altogether, based, it seemed on elements of other mythologies, like Greek, Egyptian and Norse (that I knew of), but also that he totally came up with a lot of this on his own. Each god had a very complex story and several myths associated with him. There were four main gods and goddesses. Nido went through great pains to make each god and goddess as elaborate and interesting as possible. The four gods were Sapis, god of order the sun and light, Klax, god of war and chaos, Cram, god of the sky and life, and Zash god of knowledge and the underworld. The four goddesses were Jamilia, goddess of magic and the moon, Rosaria, goddess of love and beauty, Deria, goddess of the land and harvest and Gravia goddess of the sea and intelligence.
As I flipped through the pages, I wondered why Nido would invent something so elaborate like this, and I ultimately found out, it was to serve as a constant inspiration for him to create from. I’m guessing Nido figured that as he would go on making this, he would have more to sculpt, paint, draw, write and so on, in the same way that the myths of the Greeks and so one have inspired other painters to create the most elaborate and beautiful of illustrations and sculptures, now this would inspire Nido to create whatever he deemed fit, with the perfect guidelines of having some structure, but he could ultimately change the structure for his own ends. I pointed out what I’d discovered to Kelly, and she was happy that we now had some understanding of what all of these things meant, in the meantime she had busied herself looking through an economic model Nido had recently made, perhaps a few months before his death. I asked her about it, and she told me that Nido, had successfully predicted some of the trends of things to come, economically for a few months after his death, and that he seemed to always have a very optimistic attitude toward new technologies. I told her what he had written about human achievement, and she said that was certainly consistent with everything he had predicted. She also said that along those lines, that he had drawn a plan for an economy after everything had become automated, giving stipends of certain amounts to everyone simply to live, since the work would ultimately shrink much smaller than the labor pool, according to Nido’s prediction. I asked her if she thought it was plausible, and she answered it would be if everyone thought like Frazer Nido.
After Kelly had finished looking at the book she was reading, I asked if she was ready to go downstairs, to which she replied that she thought so. On the way out, I noticed a pipe sitting in a pipe holder, which seemed quite appropriate for this room; I guessed that Nido had made it himself, as he seemed to be so apt to do. Absent-mindedly I placed it in my pocket, and followed Kelly back through the door of the office to the bedroom, and down the stairs, where she turned and opened the door to a greenhouse.
