Memories of Richard Trigaux:
Math Sup at Pau, 1972-1973

Starting Math Sup studies to become doctor in science... unfortunately, burn-out and hostility made this project fail. However it was a very positive year, where I discovered ecology, non-violence, organic food, Mensa, and some freedom newspapers.

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Date of first publication: November 2025

Date of last addition: none

These texts are a work in progress, a project spanning several years, so that they may contain missing parts and links to targets not yet created. Thanks to be patient. 🙂

 

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Pau, Lycée Louis Barthou, Math Sup

(Permalien) This subchapter was written in October 2025.

This year in Pau saw me more independent, able to buy newspapers and to go out in town as I pleased, which allowed me to discover and explore several things, which we are to see.

Especially, for the first time I met people who pretended to be also conscious. But I quickly realized that things are not that simple: either their consciousness is partial, or they have simply replaced one ideology with another. All this was certainly interesting and promising, but above all confusing, and it took me several more years to understand something in this, and learn to be wary.

But I had some interesting leads.

In short, I was no longer alone.

Provided I did not stay in Pau...

 

 

Pau, Lycée Louis Barthou, Math Sup

(Permalink) Written in June 2019.

Since I could no longer stay at the Naval College, I studied Math Sup (first two years in Faculty) in Pau during the 1972-1973 academic year, as a boarder at the Lycée Louis Barthou. Maths Sup for short. My goal was to become a doctor in science. Out of interest, but also because I realized that a basic understanding of physics would be essential to my goal of contributing to an ecological society. Maths Sup, then Maths Spé and Polytechnique seemed the most direct path toward this. At least on the career guidance brochures, which always present things in a positive light. The other programs were clearly described as «inferior», especially the manual ones. These flyers completely obscured the difficulties which would lead me to failure: according to these flyers, all you had to do was to «want it» to get a «good» diploma, and people who ended up with a training in carpentry or welding were just lazy.

Another problem was my parents' desire to send me to school «close to home». If you have children, never do this: it is a serious mistake, for very marginal benefit. Indeed, I could get home every weekend with an hour's bus ride and do my laundry at home. But the price I paid was that, I suspect, we did not had as good teachers in Pau. This is a clear example where a secondary criteria is put forward by a «specialist» focused on it, to the point of occulting the main criteria, like in the instance the quality of the teaching.

Indeed, the physics teacher was sloppy, the math teacher recited her lecture without bothering to help us. My idea was to go to Toulouse, a colorful and cheerful city. There I would have gone to the Lycée Pierre de Fermat, which has a renowned Maths Sup. And laundromats. In fact, I don't even remember how I did my laundry when I later went to Bordeaux, which proves it was not a problem at all. Laundry washing should not have precedence on our career.

 

I have good memories of the Lycée Louis Barthou itself: bright, clean, and the people were quite nice.

However, with the exception of one (whose suicide I learned about a few months later), my dorm mates were mean and bullies. It was not as bad as at the Collège Naval, but it was still enough to prevent a normal group life. There were two or three in particular who enjoyed turning my bed almost every night, which made my fatigue worse. Perhaps this also caused my heart palpitations later on. It ended that one night, they came completely drunk, screaming my name while I was not asleep... So I crouched in a corner in the dark, and once they were in the room, I greeted them by brandishing a chair. It was not a good idea, because I did not dared to hit them like that, even though they deserved a serious beating. Which I could have given them, since they were drunk and not stronger than me, and besides, they could not see me even though I could see them. One especially was a little fascist jerk, not the type to entrust later with engineering responsibilities.

 

Of course, like at any boarding school, we had pillow fights, and I was not the last one for that. I exploded one, which gave us a good laugh. But I quickly gave up: a tightly packed pillow can really hurt, and then it is no longer a game. But some of my classmates enjoyed the idea of ​​hurting, under the guise of a game.

Some even played at throwing water bombs at the students in the courtyard below. Once, such a bomb completely ruined a student's schoolwork, who could only cry looking at all her lost notebooks, and perhaps her chances of passing the exam. A slobbering cretin's gesture with terrible consequences. And these were the people who would become engineers or scientists... Despite my formal failure, I think I ultimately did better in Math Sup than those idiots.

Worse, in the dormitories below ours, there were the «P1», a training course to become a physical education teacher. Of course, there were inter-floor pillow fights. But these guys were not playing: they were even brutal, using their overstuffed pillows like real clubs. I understood from the first battle, when after a single blow I crossed an entire room unconscious. One night, they came back from a party completely drunk, and they besieged us for more than an hour, banging on our doors and shouting insults. At this point, it was clear that it was no longer a game, it was delinquency. Luckily, we had barricaded ourselves, foreseeing the problem. But my roommates chickened out, and they opened the door, which earned us hazing and insults.

 

 

Failure in Maths Sup: hostility, burnout, and more

(Permalink) Written in July 2019.

Not having succeeded in my science studies is the only major failure of my life, and the most disastrous.

I was off to a good start, after a successful last high school year and a science baccalaureate with honors. And above all, I was very motivated, hitting the ground running from the very first hours of class. The reasons which would lead me to fail were unpredictable: the lack of physical energy I have always suffered from, translated into a lack of intellectual energy in Maths Sup: the brain, lacking fuel, simply cannot sustain the attention required. And four hours of math in a row, with a soporific speech, requires more than just willpower. Clearly, I was unable to keep up with the pace, which was much more intense than in my previous year. At this point, it would have been better for me to accept the failure and study at my own pace, returning in the university in four years instead of two. But the only advice available at the time was guilt trips and accusations of being «bad». So I forced myself, and I suffered a burnout! A concept completely unknown at the time, for which the only treatment offered was the accusation of laziness. As a result, I became unable to concentrate on a class, a problem which consequences I still suffer 46 years later.

In fact, I already had this problem before: I was able to start tons of projects with enthusiasm, but had the utmost difficulty finishing them: they had become chores. Since then, I can concentrate for hours on a game, a puzzle, or some other pointless activity, but I am suddenly knocked out with fatigue the second I open a useful project. Such a selective abulia is very curious, and it cannot have any organic cause. And of course, doctors find nothing. To the point that I often wondered if I was running into some karma, or even a programmed karmic challenge. But there is a more classical explanation: everyone would actually be like me, with the brain refusing to serve without being driven by an... egotistical stake. If they manage to function anyway, it is precisely because they are motivated by all their egotistical stakes: their competition, their «financial interest», their desire to «assert themselves», their dear sadomasochistic obedience to their dear leaders, their excitement at play, etc. All things that the ego adores! But if these people had spiritual goals, they would have the same problem as me: the brain refusing to work towards a goal in which the ego sees no interest. (or not being able to bear remaining inactive during meditation). So everyone would have this problem, but people who follow this slope without trying to do something are simply... lazy. Or they reassure themselves by building opinions or prejudices against spirituality, against a better society, etc. A very common case...

 

For Math Sup, the worst thing was that, at the end of the year, my main teacher finished to ruin me: making me believe that I was «bad», to make me give up my scientific career and pursue a UIT in electronics. The conclusion is therefore clear: if you undertake difficult studies, make sure you can stick with them. If during the year it turns out you are sinking, do not push yourself to the point of breaking your system: work at your own pace, even if it means repeating a year or taking a fallback route. In this case, I could have attended the Faculty of Science, with a more acceptable pace, a student room without bullying classmates, and already a substantial background. But switching to the IUT was certainly the most destructive advice I have ever received in my life: not to consider my projects, only my «usefulness in a company». Well, the IUT later allowed me to be well paid as a technician. But it does not allow to direct research like a doctor title allows.

 

There were other, more practical difficulties:

Heavy and confusing lectures. Two, even four hours of thick, dense monologue, with no visible outline. A visual synopsis is so much simpler! But no, you have to «talk».

That basic concepts are presented only once, and never repeated again. Thus, a minute of inattention can ruin an entire year!

Some lectures were a veritable jumble, which you can get an idea of ​​from the Wikipedia pages on advanced physics: you are lost after just some lines! Replace each line with half an hour of soporific monologue, and you get an idea of ​​the problem.

But what trapped me and blocked my understanding was that, in fact, physics is not a monolithic theory (nor even math), but a set of laws arranged to fit together. So I was told about entropy, a fundamental concept of thermodynamics. But without ever saying that in physics this word is actually used in two completely incompatible senses:

-The logarithm of the number of particle permutations

-The ratio Q/T (quantity of heat per degree)

Of course, I did not understood how a ratio could be equal to a logarithm! This feeling of something eluding me made my mind classify what I heard in the «to be explored later» category. But «later» never came up, and I could not ask my bullying room mates for explanations. Moreover, Math Sup, unlike university, is a competitive system, where everyone can only rely on their own resources.

Added in 2023: I asked Chat GPT why the logarithm. He explained to me that the number of permutations multiplies when you add material. Which explains why you have to take the logarithm of the number of permutations to get an extensive quantity (proportional to the quantity of matter). But shh, not Internet in a class.

 

Several times in my life, I missed this title of Doctor in Science. I could have worked in research. Probably not in what I wanted, but nothing would have stopped me from doing my own research beside, as many scientists do. Especially in ecology, or later for my work on epistemology. Even a good scientific paper can be rejected if you are not a doctor, as I have seen several times. And the prejudice is very persistent: an amateur is excluded from science and publications, regardless of his competence or the relevance of his work. But the reverse is also true: a doctoral degree has never protected its holder from ostracism, whether for good or bad reasons. A typical case is Robert G. Jahn, the main facilitator of the Princeton PEAR experiment, an engineer and physics professor, who was dragged in the mud by Wikipedia to the point that the Princeton University removed the PEAR experiment from its website, without any explanation. All traces of these lamentable discussions have since been removed from Wikipedia, and even from the Wayback Machine!!!

 

Well, I shall put this failure into perspective, in two ways:

1) I would be curious to know how many of my classmates actually became doctors or engineers. And of those who did, how many actually did something useful with their lives. In any case, I have never found back any of them, even with the internet.

2) Furthermore, even if I did not retain all the complex mathematical apparatus, I still received a good grounding in physics. Today these bases are ultimately very useful to me, to write my book «General Epistemology», or to understand the technical issues of energy, in ecology.

 

 

My Beginnings in Ecology, the journal «La Gueule Ouverte»

(Permalink) Written in June 2019.

This period was my first real contact with ecology activism. I was already familiar with scientific ecology, through Science et Vie, and the risks we ran by neglecting it. But the fact that citizens were reacting was an extremely encouraging news. In fact, organizations like Les Amis de la Terre already existed for years, and we could go back to the naturists and hygienists of the 1920s. But all of this had remained confidential. What was new was that ecology was being discussed in newspapers shops.

What was not encouraging however was that these first articles appeared in... Charlie Hebdo. An extremely ambiguous situation: on the one hand, we liked Cabu's Grand Duduche, but on the other, it associated ecology with all the garbage in that magazine. The emergence of the first independent ecology magazine, titled «La Gueule ouverte» (slang for «the open mouth») in the same style, hardly helped the situation, and I remember a newspaper seller warning me «not to buy that rubbish». It is clear that ecology suffered greatly from this proximity to the lowest-level populist press. Less visible but far more serious than vulgarity, this also associated ecology with the atheist fundamentalism of Charlie Hebdo, which rubbed off on ecologists, cutting the movement off from its spiritual roots from the 1920s and limiting it to political politicking. This bias was all the more dangerous because it was unconscious, and still it is largely so today among the «Greens».

 

Aside from that, what were the topics discussed in the first issues of the independent ecologist press? In keeping with Charlie Hebdo and the leftists, it criticized society as irredeemably rotten, even seeing its positive aspects as taking over and shenanigans. This cynical dualism (led by Isabelle Monin, known at the time as Isabelle Cabu, Cabu's wife, who seemed incapable of understanding that someone different from her could be sincere) would also severely undermine activists. It was not until 47 years later (2020) that some Greens dared to associate themselves with «right-wing» figures (in the Marseille municipal elections).

 

On the positive side, there were some incredible things in La Gueule Ouverte: it discussed organic food and farming. The principles were clearly explained, under the name at the time of soil microbiology, a concept which is now making a comeback under the name of regenerative farming. I remember many «System D» articles explaining how to tinker with a solar panel, a wind turbine, and so on. All of this gave a familiar and practical twist to ecology, which was often too abstract, or reduced solely to demonstrations.

They also provided lists of organic stores. And there was one in Pau, precisely! Well, I never knew why La Gueule Ouverte considered «La Vie Claire» as «pétainist», but that label stuck with them for a long time in the ecologists community. Anyway, I went to see that store! Today, there still is a Vie Claire in Pau, at 37 rue Émile Guichenné, a place which roughly corresponds to my memory.

The store was small, but as soon as you entered, you were greeted by an unforgettable aroma: wholemeal bread! It is rare to smell it today in sanitized organic supermarkets, but at the time, it was a fantastic revelation. So, I bought my first wholemeal loaf! It was strange to discover that such a basic commodity as bread, as we all knew it, was in fact completely adulterated and unrecognizable. But for anyone who has tasted whole-wheat bread (without prejudice), reality immediately sets in, and you can no longer eat that bland, rubbery white bread. Wholegrain bread is rich in aromas, flavors, textures, and, above all, in vitamins and nutrients deliberately removed from white bread!

Well, I could not avoid the high school cafeteria, with its white bread, milk, and meat. But I still had whole-wheat bread in my dorm room to make toasts with.

When I say my classmates were idiots, I am not exaggerating: they immediately rejected ecology and wholegrain bread, sometimes citing incredible conflations (and the title «La Gueule Ouverte» did not helped).

Worse still, even our physics teacher thought it useful to mock «those who protect nature» by mentioning in his chemistry class the chimney of the Poudrerie in Toulouse, which must have indeed released quite a lot of poisons. Anti-ecologist as soon as 1973, he was certainly a great pioneer! Worse, while saying this he gave me a sly smile, indicating that there were gossips and connivance between him and certain students... this cronyism perhaps partly explains my bad physics grades, which sometimes seemed undeserved (My problems in Math Sup were mainly in math. I absorbed physics rather well).

 

On the other hand, when I brought the wholegrain bread at home, my mother had an unexpected reaction: she immediately loved it, because it reminded her of «the bread of the war»! She was talking about either German rye bread, given to her in 1940 by Wehrmacht soldiers after she had marched for days without eating anything, or the bread her mother made with gleaned wheat that they ground themselves. These compositions are indeed much healthier and tastier than white bread (the latter even had suspicious additions during the war, like sawdust). So when I was at the Faitg with our Criquet mill, I always did the remilling (returning the sifting residue through the mill, and extracting a particularly nourishing flour).

 

An interesting detail is that the store owners handed me a brochure on «how to avoid cancer.» At the time, I was frankly skeptical, because I simply did not see the connection between cancer and diet. Their theory was that we constantly have hundreds of proto-cancers, but that the body knows how to contain them. Organic food would help it with this task. This is not exactly what science says today, but it was not such a bad idea for the time, when we still did not knew that cancers were monoclonal lines. And the confirmation came recently (2019): people who regularly eat organic food have 25% fewer cancers. (Study by Julia Baudry, Karen E. Assmann, and MathildeTouvier. Paper on JAMA Intern Med)

 

 

The City of Pau

(Permalink) Written in July 2019.

First of all, «Pau» is an Occitan name, pronounced «Paou.» But the French Revolution merely perpetuated the arrogance of the Vaugelas and other Versailles idlers, considering that only the Parisian dialect was «good French». Until recently, Occitan was pejoratively called «patois», a French-only pejorative word, rather than being considered a language. In fact, despite the denials of local chauvinists, with eight different languages ​​on its metropolitan territory alone (Flemish, French, Breton, Occitan, Basque, Catalan, Corsican, German (prudently called Alsatian), plus today Arabic, Gipsy and Berber), France is the most diverse country in Europe. My stay in Pau would coincide with the discovery of this hidden reality, revealed by the first ecologist magazine, which we saw earlier.

 

Due to their abnormal behavior, I did not really had a social life with my classmates in Maths Sup. But I did have a few relationships with some high school seniors. There was a rock music club, where I went to meet people. Unfortunately, it did not last long due to a lack of volunteers to do anything. But I was able to go to some parties in friends' houses.

In fact, Pau was the first time I was truly free in a place far from my family. Although I came back every weekend by bus. So my trips to the Vie Claire store were my first completely independent activities, from decision to execution. Okay, I know, today this freedom is taken much younger, but you have to remember that at the time, the age of majority was still 21, and I was even not considered an adult.

 

There are not many walks in Pau, beyond the park surrounding the high school and the castle. But Pau has a curious feature: the Rue du Hédas. It is a winding street which runs below the city level, not communicating with the other streets which pass above. This makes the place paradoxically isolated, even though we are in the middle of the city. Even the noise of cars is muffled or even inaudible! In fact, the place historically had a bad reputation, and in 1973 it was still deserted and unwelcoming (although already paved). Since then, the municipality of Pau has worked to make it more lively, including trees, a promenade, restaurants, associations, etc. But at the time this place was fascinating and a bit disturbing, like a secret passage which would connect unexpected places. It has since been one of my recurring dreams: a corridor or tunnel, often accessible through hidden doors, cellars, technical installations, which allows initiates to travel more easily, or through barriers or prohibitions, or even to escape attackers. The vibration is invariably a little unsettling, like the smell of burning rags or an old house closed for a long time. But the initiate knows that this place is actually their accomplice. Others simply do not notice it.

Added in 2022: Note that there are streets in London (Charring Cross Road), Bristol, and Edinburgh which have been completely covered over by an upper level (search for «Burried Streets»). The ground floors then became underground, unused, and for the most part remained as they were in the 17th century, even with furniture! I suspect such streets also exist in Toulouse, as the former terrain featured several small valleys.

 

There were two electronics stores in Pau, which could not escape my visits. But both were curious psychological cases. In the first, they did not wanted to hear about transistors, defending tubes in a fierce rearguard fight. Basically, in a tube, we understand what is happening in terms of electrons launched along trajectories, like balls. But the invisible quantum effects underlying transistors are much more abstract! Hence a certain refusal, which had existed at the time. But it was quickly swept away by the power of transistors' advantages.

Well, fleeing to the other store, I was able to buy my transistors as I saw fit. But when I went to the office to pay, a guy in a suit and tie came out of his room, scolding his employee, «Don't let these amateurs in anymore!» I also realized that his three secretaries were all blonde with big breasts. I think this guy was not really understanding what a secretary is for, lol! And that people in Pau who wanted to work in electronics were ultimately just as badly off as the people in Mont de Marsan. Unless they showed up at his store wearing fake breasts, hahaha!

 

In Pau is the Gaston Phoebus castle. A must-see. However, the inner courtyard of this castle seemed very small to me, compared to its supposed historical grandeur. One of the staircases opening in the light gray stones courtyard (in the back on the left) seemed so narrow to me that they took on the appearance of a gray nightmare, as if people had been locked up here and had reached the depths of a nervous breakdown. I felt the same despairing gray vibration in several places in the city, to the point of fleeing these places. Pau is definitely a very curious city, sometimes heavy with a cruel past, of which the light gray stones preserve the memory.

This sometimes despairing vibration of the Landes and Gascony in general, with all these women atrophied by this gray world of idiotic and cruel conventions, is well captured in the book «Thérèse Desqueyroux» by François Mauriac. This is exactly what I saw. And when I say «atrophied», it is not a figure of speech: I would not be surprised if, even at that time, in the farms, the girls received less to eat. They were indeed significantly smaller and frailer than men, and they also kept in the back, socially! Remember, only 26 years before, in a great town like Reims, my mother was removed from school because she was a girl.

 

 

Mensa

(Permalink) Written in July 2019.

I also learned to drive in Pau. This was also a step toward independence, even though I hesitated for a long time about actually driving, since I did not have my own car.

 

But the most important thing for me was taking the Mensa entrance exam. For those who do not know, the only requirement to enter Mensa is to be in the top 2% of IQs. I had heard about this organization through Science & Vie, and had passed the test proposed by the magazine. The year before, in Brest, I had asked permission from the Naval College to take the real test. It was refused. But in Pau, I did not have to ask permission, and I was able to go there by train, in Toulouse.

I passed this difficult test (which put my failure in Math Sup into perspective). For me, it represented above all a fact: that I was not stupid or idiotic like my abnormal hazing classmates pretended. So it was a huge boost in self-confidence. And a confirmation that my «difference» was indeed an advance, not a backwardness or anomaly. I was indeed the «normal» one, not the hazers grimacing with stupidity.

One of the goals of the founders of Mensa was to bring together people capable of providing solutions to society's problems. Of course, I immediately embraced this project, ready to invest myself in any project of this kind! Unfortunately, the result was rather disappointing: among themselves, Mensa members mostly talked about mathematical games and puzzles. Moreover, there are relatively few of them in France, and I only met a few, without being able to really discuss my ideas for a better society. The reason, I understand it today: if you want a group of non-psychoeducated people to remain friendly, you must carefully avoid politics or religion. Otherwise, people argue, and they cannot work together like Mensans were supposed to. I then had to admit that high IQs are not much more positive than ordinary people! A fact I had long buried in my memory without being able to explain. It was only when I discovered spirituality that I understood why: becoming positive requires other qualities, such as love, sensitivity to vibrations, etc. But in this case, IQ plays only a secondary role: even people of modest intelligence or culture have accomplished very interesting things, while most engineers and scientists only shine in their technical field, without knowing how to give it a positive direction.

At the time of my participation (1973 to 1977), Mensa still claimed its inspiration from Cyril Burt, a science crook who had conducted rigged experiments to support the idea that intelligence was purely hereditary. He naturally drew conclusions in favor of eugenics, and especially of social and educational selection based on IQ. These ideas strongly influenced all of psychology until the 1980s, hence the grave danger of psychology at that time, which essentially sought to normalize people and to blame or punish those who did not fit the mold. Cyril Burt was the first honorary president of Mensa, and I remember that in 1973, Mensa members still regarded him with respect and admiration. It was not until the late 1970s that the fraud was exposed, a very dangerous fraud «justifying» social or racial segregation, transforming all of psychology into an Orwellian control of society, especially of children. This exposure finally allowed psychology to restart on a healthier basis, one of individual fulfillment instead of social selection.

 

Of course, the Great Neutral Wikipedia denigrates the Mensans, describing them as eccentric or having relationship difficulties. And this is, of course, false: all those I met were very well integrated: one was a company director, another a professor, a third an artist, and so on.

But Wikipedia also says that many suffered the same rejection as me: mocked by the idiots, misunderstood for their curiosity, and paradoxically in academic failure due to their difficulty submitting to a discipline which denies their emotional needs. This, conversely, also explains why engineers or senior civil servants are often technocrats with severe emotional disabilities or spiritual retardation: the education system targets and destroys precisely these aspects of life. So I am sure I could have achieved my goal of becoming a doctor es science, taking my time at university, with the encouragement of good classmates, the support of my family, and the arms of a woman at night.

I stayed at Mensa for several years, receiving and reading their magazine Quipos. It was only under the influence of my zonard meetings in Toulouse that I finally stopped paying the membership fee. A mistake, certainly, but I did not feel the desire to pay again, even when later I met Mensans again in Second Life: in the meantime I had discovered what they were missing, and where to find it.

 

 

Synergetics

(Permalink) Written in July 2019.

Science et Vie is sometimes criticized by scientists, for their «very optimistic» articles on the «upcoming progress» of science, or to speak of pseudosciences. René-Louis Vallée's synergetics comes out of this last category, and it was even the first conspirationist theory I was confronted to. But at the time the concept was unknown, and no one was wary, and me neither. René-Louis Vallée was a professional physicist, working at the CEA at the time, which made him very credible. He based his statements on a theory debated at the time by physicists (but rejected since): the energy of the zero point, as what the absolute emptiness would contain a phenomenal quantity of energy. Valley proposed a simple way to extract this energy:

An electric field and a magnetic field of the same direction would have forced electrons to penetrate carbon 12 nuclei, transmuting them into boron 12. The latter then emits a beta radiation, which it would be «sufficient» to recover (the magnetic field orienting it in the right direction). This last reaction recreating carbon 12, we would have had a cycle, which energy balance would have been positive, thanks to the energy of the void. Science et Vie even offered the plan of a device to be made on our kitchen table, which would have demonstrated the process.

Of course I tried, and unsurprisingly nothing happened, despite the danger warnings of Science et Vie. In fact there were several strong objections:

- The description of Science et Vie was vague on several essential points

- The process of absorbing an electron by carbon 12 only occurs at much higher voltages.

- The boron 12 has a half-life of 20 milliseconds: the energy produced would not have been in phase with the 50Hz supposed to animate the experience. For this reason, scientific tests were done with pulses. But I was not equipped for that.

- The radiation of boron 12 remains isotropic, even in the field of a magnetar.

- 1.6% of the boron 12 disintegrates into three alpha particles, breaking the cycle.

This means that few scientists have taken the matter seriously, and in any case the rare attempts to reproduce the experience were complete failures.

However, when the article appeared, this test was not yet done, and, enthusiastic, encouraged by my recent consciousness taking of the energy problem, I wrote to Vallée to ask him what experiences he intended to do to check his theory. After all, I was in Math Sup to do this kind of research precisely, and it could have been my gateway to institutional science. His answer was unexpected: he intended not to do anything before the physicists admitted his theory. Which exactly puts the cart before the oxen: physicists check a theory first, and then accept it, never the opposite!!

More seriously, the letter was accompanied by a mimeographed review where it denounced the «Jewish plot» against synergetics. With the memory of the ruins of war still smoking in my memory, I only knew too well where the accusations of Jewish conspiracy lead. I then totally divested myself from the case.

Scientific experiences gave no results, and Valley was dismissed from the CEA for its delusional accusations.

Sad affair of conspiracy paranoia, which cost the author's career.

 

What is a shame is that this kind of pseudoscience has corrupted the concept of free energy. For the first ecologists, free energy was an energy which does not cost alienation to a system such as capitalism or high technology: windmill, sailboat, etc. An interesting idea therefore, but completely obscured since by the constant claims to find perpetual movements, telluric energies, etc.

 

As a matter of fact, I heard a little later about the «N Machine» by Bruce de Palma, this time by the first ecology review «la Gueule Ouverte». A metal disc rotates with a magnet. A brush in the center and another on the edge recover an induced current. Normally, such a device does not produce any current. But the authors claimed to observe a low tension, which they attributed to new unknown physics. This time the indications were precise enough to do a test: I built an N-Machine. And there was indeed a low tension!! I took a moment before understanding why: this tension is induced, not in the disc, which turns with the magnet, but in the brush, which is fixed, but immersed in the rotating magnetic field. I tried to keep it away from the magnet: the tension disappears.

La Gueule Ouverte also advertised for Kervran's transmutations, form waves, acausal events, and other things of this kind, while Science and Life also described the Prioré machine. At the time, it was understandable that a questioning of society was accompanied by a questioning about science (which could have been biased, as with nuclear power, tobacco, etc.). But these questioning never led to anything, and today these things are only shabby conspiracy, or investor scams.

 

Thus, when the fashion of conspirationism and pseudoscience theories began, in the 2010', it came across an old ranger who already knew the song very well...

 

 

Non-violence

(Permalink) Written in July 2019.

It must be that year that I discovered non-violence, always by la Gueule Ouverte (which, despite the name and the atheist sectarianism of the animators, opened a lot of doors). I received the book «les travailleurs face à l'armée» (The workers in front of the army) by Jean Authier, from the Union Pacifiste de France. Despite the marxist wording, they were in facts closer to Gandhi. There too I needed several years before fully accepting non-violence. But Jean Authier's argument is unstoppable: responding to violence through violence maintains a vicious circle, which must be broken at one point, even if it requires renouncing to justice. This is the role of non-violence. After some hesitation in the next two years in Bordeaux, I had to irreversibly opt for non-violence, three years later.

 

Later, my discovery of authentic spirituality multiplied this commitment. Put we shall also see in the thread on wars, the real limits to non-violence.

 

 

The newspaper «Liberation»

(Permalink) Written in December 2020

It was at this time, in 1973, that the newspaper «Liberation» was founded. «Being able to counter them every day,» was their argument, which spoke to us strongly. Indeed, at a time when more than 100% of the press staunchly supported the system, it was vital to have a space where we could actually denounce the said system, its schemes, its lies, its crimes, and especially its cataclysmic ignorance, which made a heavy lead weigh on all aspects of our lives. The sun was finally rising on the gray world of the 1950s!

«Libé», as we called it affectionately, was the first general public newspaper in color, which spoke of life. And with none less than Jean-Paul Sartre in the steering committee, it was serious.

Alas it did not last long... Libé quickly degenerated into social-limp, and even as a poop newspaper, if we remember the punk pages decorated with nazi crosses, or the delirium of a Jean-Luc Hennig explaining how he had «transcended the shit» (detailed descriptions of his scatological sexual practices, a high moment of French culture certainly). Libé quickly became a newspaper of the system among the others, just that he occupied a new niche: the bobo clientele, who likes to give itself a good conscience by gargling with advanced subjects, while especially not paying with their person to make things really happen concretely.

And this is what Libé did, after two or three years: pretending to be social, while denigrating people who really acted. I quote two blatant cases, among many others, where Libé has openly played a role of gravedigger of the social evolution that it claimed to develop:

- Its hostility to free radios.

- Its liquidation of the anti-nuclear movement around 1978. This movement was struggling with many leftist infiltration trying to degenerate the demonstrations in pure confrontation with the police. So the real ecologists had finally decided to stick to strict non-violence, a decision that Libé has announced with an assumed disappointment. Then there was this large anti-nuclear festival in Flamanville, completely obliterated by a storm, leaving the organizers in bankruptcy. Libé then announced that «anti-nuclear is over». And... indeed people stopped coming to the demonstrations! Hence the stopping of this movement, thank you Libé, a model dog finally succeeding in bringing the herd that the great shepherds of the system no longer controlled.

We shall also see a case which protagonists I knew, where Libé made the equation German = nazi.

 

In fact, with Libé, we attended the complete degeneration process of a new expression channel:

1) Creation by idealists

2) Appearance of factions trying to colonize the new space of freedom, like mold spots of different colors in a new Petri dish: Maoist, Situationist, Spontex, Anarchists, Social-limp, future punks, porn people, etc.

3) Departure or eviction of the starting idealists of the beginning (Jean Paul Sartres after six months)

4) The canal having become without object, it wanders without purpose (punkism, nazi crosses, scatology), while being available for the highest bidder

5) Grabbing (in this case literally a buyout) by the system of control of expression, in a new «cool» form better suited to the Bobo customers that the old reactionary pétainist newspapers, see from the napoleon era.

 

Today Wikipedia denigrates Libé saying that it was far left. Like many Wikipedia lies, it plays on a real part to give credibility to the false. Even if it was talking about the far left, Libé made known many more things: music, ecology, feminism, third world, economy, alternatives, sexual liberation, etc. It was the very first to support the LGBT (an expression still unknown at the time). In short, Libé was actually eclectic, something that the far left is totally unable to do. As for the LGBT, the leftists at the time were rather prudish, they could not support that! The share of truth in the Wikipedia lie is that there would have been a far left cell (Maoist as it was said at the time) among the first molds in the Petri box. But they were finally ousted, just like the idealist founders. The system does not like leftists, and it eliminates them as soon as they have done the dirty job of discouraging the idealists.

 

Added in 2025: This judgment on Libe will seem very severe to all those who discovered ideals with it. But for someone who was already at a higher level, I only saw too well the dirty «payload» that they made rise, using the ascending force of the ideals they waved and then threw away.

 

 

My beginnings in politics

(Permalink) Written in July 2019.

Pau saw me very naive in politics. But my previous consciousness taking had told me that society needed corrections: we only saw too many disorders, not to mention the unacceptable wars, and my emerging awareness of pollution. But, without me realizing, this consciousness was already polluted by the dualistic and cynical spirit of Charlie Hebdo: the «people of the society» were «beaufs» (stupid fatty reactionary men), militaristic, alcoholic, bigots, sexually stuck, capitalists, destructive of nature, threats to our survival. My father did not helped, presenting me «society» as a masochistic norm to which I «had to» submit by renouncing my «unrealistic» projects. (To hear him, he knew these standards naturally, when I naturally ignored them. It is with this kind of detail that we recognize a sociopath while he is still «kind»).

Which suggested a vision of which I took a long time to get rid of: the nice revolutionaries perfect on one side, and the unrecoverable reactionaries on the other. Pure dualism, one of the most dangerous ideological viruses in all politics and spirituality combined. But for the moment, that was not arousing practical problems, given my low participation.

 

My first opportunity to get involved in politics came with the strike in high school, this spring 1973. The students were furious against the Debré law, which threatened their studies doubly, by interrupting them with a year of useless and unpopular military slavery, while adding an additional difficulty, the useless and unpopular examination of the DEUG, at the end of the first university cycle.

In fact, I did not do much: in Pau there was no big demonstration, and I still preferred to avoid this. There were also posters at the entrance of the Lycée, covered with incomprehensible leftist speeches.

Still I attended a student meeting. I expected to finally be able to discuss the real problems of life, without more controls by «adults» or hazers. The disappointment was up to this expectation, and not only for me: the meeting was totally monopolized by two types which were noisily disputing, without any idea of ​​why, nor of who they were. And no way for anyone else to place a word. And it was not easy for me to try, with my shyness of victims of stalking, which still blocked me in public.

Well, it would have taken me another two years in Bordeaux, and one in Toulouse, and some trouble, to finally understand what the leftists really are, and in general people who despise society. What we shall see from the next chapter: Bordeaux and the leftists.