Up to now I have considered my site a think tank – but no longer!
From now on I’m calling the Last Great Gentleman Thinker a…
Mind Tank
And I very much hope others who use their minds to produce creative, unique and inspiring contributions which further the reaches of human understanding will join me with their Mind Tanks.
Maybe, even, someone with a better understanding of the internet, which I don’t use, will start a list of Mind Tanks similar to the Last Great Gentleman Thinker and thus create a niche for those who actually use their minds to think further and come up with original ideas that go beyond what is of the common ken.
If someone does create a Mind Tank list I hope the first on that list will be The Last Great Gentleman Thinker and I look forward to your reactions to the Mind Tank concept here on the Last Great Gentleman Thinker site.
Allow me to explain how the above came about.
I applied for The Last Great Gentleman Thinker to be included in a list of thinks tanks managed by the Open Think Tank Org, but after many months of being ignored or put off it turned out to be the Closed Think Tank Org for the Last Great Gentleman Thinker, for which no coherent reason was ever given, but only insinuations to the effect that The Last Great Gentleman Thinker was different from the sites on their list in that their think tanks are not actually think tanks at all but analysis tanks established as companies for lucre.
The following is my last letter to this Closed Think Tank Org which will enlighten you as to the history of the Last Great Gentleman Thinker’s application process, interestingly enough still offering information for its inclusion as requested in their prior letter, but this last letter of mine didn’t merit the courtesy of an answer by the Closed Think Tank Org…
Before though, please look for my soon to come next piece titled, Democracy or Autocracy for the Survival of the Species – Or is it Capitalism?
Camelot,
March 31st, 2024
Open Think Tank Org
Re: The Last Great Gentleman Thinker Think Tank
This is Bruce, the creator of the captioned think tank and Daniel Mitchell’s father, who acts as my front man for modern communications.
I believe the contents of this letter are of interest to you, and although I complain at first my ultimate intention is to better the knowledge available via think tanks, so I trust you will give my letter the attention that the effort or writing it deserves.
With pleasure I will answer your letter requesting more detail on the Last Great Gentleman Thinker think tank for your assessment.
I have to say that you have succeeded all along in making me feel more and more like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel.
And you seem to have taken it upon yourselves to dictate what a think tank is and what it is not, and who can or cannot have a think tank, or who is not worthy of having a think tank at all according to your self-fabricated rulings on the subject, but it is your list, so you can obviously decide who gets on it, and I will therefore make yet another effort in that direction.
All the further detail your letter requests has already been given you, which is irksome indeed, especially coming after you have already strung out my application over several months, making the whole experience so far not a little humiliating for me, and I cannot see what you have to gain by being condescending and sitting in judgment on other peoples work, especially when you could have studied the Last Great Gentleman Thinker think tank via the website sent to you. All of that makes one wonder about how well organized your organization is.
All intellectual submissions made by others as contributions to current general knowledge and understanding intended for the betterment of all should have the right to be known, if worthy of it, and it seems that the requirements for your think tank list are entirely about the structure behind the think tanks and not about the worthiness of what they offer considering what they purport to be.
Your 2st paragraph…
As already stated in my application form, The Last Great Gentleman Thinker is the think tank of an individual - of mine… Who am I? Does it matter so long as what I write is worthy of general consideration, which it is, and so long as it is not offensive, which it certainly is not, rather, in every way to the contrary?
However, who I am is fully demonstrated in the contents of the Last Great Gentleman Thinker think tank which is at your and everyone’s disposal, and hopefully its contents will be more readily available generally through your list, and specifically to the others on your list.
The Last Great Gentleman Thinker is an actual think tank. The Last Great Gentleman Thinker is devoted to creative, novel and universally beneficial thought, yes, to actual thinking.
The corresponding summary outlining the foregoing is clearly stated in your required application form for inclusion in your think tank list.
Just for illustration, not as a comparison, my think tank would be relatable to the think tank, let’s say, either Aristotle or Newton or Smith would have published.
To continue with your letter, obviously, and as stated in every way in the application form, as I am an individual, there is no organization and no registration, but the primary function of the Last Great Gentleman Thinker is clear, its governance and management are my own, it generates no income nor requests any, and its approach and mission have also been made very clear.
According to you individuals cannot think. Only organizations can think.
Organizations can think, they can think inside the organizational box, but to think outside the box, even if that box is an organizational think tank box, requires individuals outside the box, which all organization will recognize as being absolutely true and if they don’t they are getting themselves more and more boxed in all the time.
Tell me if the person responsible for making Lego what it is today didn’t think outside the box to achieve it. And, in the same way, tell me if most companies which have gone under did not do so because they did not have an individual thinking outside their box to keep them buoyant.
And, in your case, you send me a letter which takes no account of the events prior to it nor the information already in your possession, which clearly shows that your letter is no more than a seal for your box intended to avoid any reason or sense or understanding or creativity in because you keep all light out of your box.
The Last Great Gentleman Thinker qualifies as a research think tank, not in the sense you seem to mean, but in the way those of Aristotle or Newton of Smith would have done.
Your 3rd paragraph…
The Last Great Gentleman Thinker is published as a think tank and thereby is entirely available to you.
The author has not sought to be independently published as a researcher, which he is not, he is a thinker.
His research is within his own mind according to his general knowledge, intuition, sense, sensibility and intellectual creativity, and a simple perusal of his pieces will make it obvious to you that they are anything but general commentaries or op-eds to be featured in newspapers, nor can they be limited to sociopolitical or economic commentary (and, even if all the above was true, what does it matter?) because many subjects uniquely furthering a wide range of fields of human enquiry are dealt with, and every major piece of the Last Great Gentleman Thinker has its premise, its development and its conclusion, and are summaries of fully developed proposals, and every one of them is unique in that it offers understanding that has never been known before. Isn’t that a better definition of a think tank than your straight jacket conditioning?
Despite all I’ve said I suspect we are not going to arrive at an understanding because you seem to be unable to see beyond the limitations you yourselves have strapped yourselves into, which limitations exclude actual thinking and are determined to limit the reach of think tanks to what are mostly publicity mechanism, image projectors or, as do the vast majority of them, “analyze” exactly the same issues, in exactly the same way, and only vary in their political or economic stance and their income aspiration.
The think tanks on your list are not think tanks, they are analysis tanks.
The Last Great Gentleman Thinker is a pure think tank containing novel, unique, pure thought, which, according to you, would have made neither Aristotle nor Newton nor Smith worthy of your list.
Ford’s thinking up the assembly line would not have qualified for your list.
Indeed, none of the great thinkers or achievers of history would have made your list, and that is highly questionable, which I only say for your interest sake and benefit.
And what is more worrying about your rigid stance is that it tends to engender thoughts with words like, suppression, repression, discrimination, segregation, totalitarianism etc., all words righty loathed by the free world, a world very much in need of original thinking and less standard, superficial analysis.
Anyway, don’t worry, I will create my own list.
Perhaps you will consider changing the name of your list to analysis tanks, which is much the more correct term for those on your list, and I can use the word think for actual thinking tanks.
But I firmly believe that the other think tanks of your list have the right to study and asses the contributions given in the Last Great Gentleman Thinker and have no doubt they will be much appreciated by many of them.
Let them decide, after all, your list depends on them, not them on your list.
Glad to continue if you would like to further the analysis developed above, and I am and remain,
Yours faithfully,
Bruce D. Mitchel
And, you know…
Gin a body meet a body
Comin’ thro’ the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body
Need a body cry…
Robert Burns
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