Publishing Statement
The publishing effort of Citizen Initiative has been described as an uphill struggle against the bookselling establishment. Most retail outlets in Britain are promoters of the publishing giants and zero-rate anything outside the commercial circuit. This outlook was demonstrated by Ottakars and Waterstones, two of the major retail chains in Britain. Now becoming well known is an incident which occurred at the Dorchester branch of Ottakars in 2005. This shop had been observed to promote the new age magazine Kindred Spirit and had displayed several books on love spells, which encourage superstition. Citizen Initiative has a post box address in Dorchester, and yet the local Ottakars appetite refused to stock or display Pointed Observations and the companion work, stating that these were too academic and too "heavy." Yet that same shop was stocking books like The Element Encyclopaedia of 5000 Spells (priced at £20, more expensive than the Citizen books). As a local author, Kevin Shepherd sent a list of subjects incorporated in Pointed Observations to the managing director of Ottakars headquarters, urging that such pressing issues should be made known and not excluded from the commercial shelves. The subjects he listed in his letter are as follows:
a) Critique of the excesses of the magician Aleister Crowley, which include vampirism, wife torture, the suggested rape and murder of a young girl, and heroin addiction.
b) Critique of the LSD and related "therapies" of Dr. Stanislav Grof, which have been influential in circles often described as new age. Coverage is included of measures taken by American scientists to cordon the Grofian resuscitation of MDMA therapy, which is an illegal practice.
c) Critique of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult who were involved in MDMA use, extreme promiscuity, and terrorism (and whose influence strongly endures in the problem called Tantric sex).
d) The crime of Ira Einhorn, a new age superstar who preached love but who brutally murdered his girlfriend and who hid the corpse in a closet, and after being glorified by Harvard University.
e) An exposure of the dangers in cocaine use and cannabis use, employing recent research in the face of widespread official and public ignorance about cannabis.
f) AIDS data as detailed by the BBC, though rejected by too many bookshops selling erotic novels, love spells, and other distractions.
g) The alarming spread of violent murders, paedophilism, and juvenile crime as known to the police and the Victims of Crime Trust.
h) Critique of the Findhorn Foundation, a controversial new age community who have promoted, e.g., Aleister Crowley and neoReichian gestalt, but who screen out critics of the anomalies (which include a case of alleged child abuse). The Foundation were recently televised by Channel 4 (in 2004), but the coverage omitted controversial issues, the media being seriously deficient in this instance.
The Ottakars headquarters responded to the confrontational letter by supporting the action of their Dorchester branch, and denying any ideological bias. The Range Development Manager stated in June 2005 that "we will not be placing any orders now; we base this decision on purely commercial grounds." The point to grasp is that purely commercial grounds are the operative factor in book selection and exclusion. There is no due consideration given to education by such components of the book trade, who exploit the public in too many respects.
There are a minority of conscientious staff in some bookshops who do feel concerned at the avalanche of decadent literature, the exotic claims of alternative therapy, the spread of magic and witchcraft, and the insidious overture of the drugs lobby. One of Waterstones branches in a major city recognised the pressing relevance of Pointed Observations and the companion book Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals. That branch requested the Waterstones management for an adoption of those books by all branches. The request was vetoed by the commercial policy in operation at this major retail chain. Further enquiry elicited the explanation from the management headquarters that they did not see how they could be expected to work on any other basis than a commercial one. There is no comprehension of an educational role.
Many bookshops in Britain order from the publishing giants, who largely determine what the public will read. Big business is at the root of consumerism. The publishing giants vary in their agenda. The standards in many novels leave much to be desired, and the new age vogue for love spells and other forms of magic is one that adds superstition to bad taste. Kevin Shepherd has complained that serious books by non-commercial writers cannot hope to compete with spells in the deteriorating literary climate imposed by wrong selection. He says that a return to medieval superstition is occurring in commercial sectors, and that this lax mood is adversely affecting younger readers.
Shepherd denies that the "Mind, Body, Spirit" (MBS) trend contributes to the desired intuition that is often mentioned as a foil to rationality. He says that confusion and misinformation are instead what is being consolidated. The criteria for inclusion on MBS shelves have been found to be extremely inadequate. Bookshop buyers in this field continually opt for books that attest a sensational element, popular idiom, and uncritical treatment of materials. In some shops, MBS has been reclassified as Magic and Ritual, Divination and Prediction, Spirituality, and Personal Development. The result is chronic miseducation, claims Shepherd. Occultism and alternative therapy have been glorified in this trend, which has led to obsessions like crystal lore and Tantric sex, which on close investigation have been found to be very unhealthy. Shepherd has joked that the "Aquarian Age" actually decodes to an inverted Piscean debacle in contemporary bookshops.
On another front, the retail giant W. H. Smith is noted for stocking novels and "easy read" literature. A Citizen rep found that W. H. Smith headquarters asserted that they could only stock fast selling and bestselling books with due review ballast. This meant commercial novels and extensively advertised books by or about popular celebrities of diverse background. One of Kevin Shepherd’s reviewers commented that Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals would be cheap at three times the retail price due to the research content. Yet that book (and the companion volume) was deemed too uncommercial by the W. H. Smith headquarters, who prefer to stock Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror. The issue of reviewer support becomes meaningless in the face of such agendas.
The prevailing situation in which big business feeds the public with deficient (or trash) literature is a commercial affliction of serious proportions. The exploiting shops argue that they must sell what is in demand, but that so often means excluding what is more educational. It is big business that creates the demand and which stifles improved standards of literature. In so doing, big business contributes to social maladies and public ignorance of choice. Retail outlets like Ottakars deluge readers with Sci-fi and Fantasy, Horror, Crime Fiction, Magic and Ritual, Divination and Prediction. They get rich at the expense of consumers, who are frequently sick and confused.
In response to queries about identity, Kevin Shepherd has recently described himself as a citizen philosopher, a phrase which does not imply any status. He explains that this unofficial role contrasts with the academic philosopher who is often regarded as having a monopoly in matters of analysis and rigorous thought. Yet he is said to have cited more sources than many academic philosophers. Nowadays, academic philosophy is losing in the public sector. Retail outlets like Waterstones and Ottakars frequently say that their philosophy department is a small one, and therefore can only accept major names who sell fast. That means Nietzsche and Foucault, plus a handful of others. Such nominations ultimately derive from the universities, which do not always prescribe what is beneficial.
Citizen philosophy has different emphases to academic philosophy. The jacket of Pointed Observations bears a quotation from page 343 of the contents. "The incentive on the part of citizens to dispute or query official and public matters, and to extend educational horizons, might be described as a democratic prerogative. That incentive may involve supplying information frequently neglected." Shepherd values the term democracy, though he says that in general it is a shallow word representing situations in which the underdog citizens are pushed out of the ideological arena by capitalism, bureaucratic myopia, academic superiority complexes, and new age rhetoric too frequently amounting to dissimulation.
In his Second Letter to Tony Blair, Shepherd states that he does not use a computer. This is well known amongst his friends. His angle here was not typical of the contemporary scene, like many other features of his philosophy. He points to the widespread abuse of the internet by commerce, and says that any educational content has only a random chance against the big business and personal business instincts which govern this form of media. Pornography and computer games now clog the minds of young users, who have recently been discerned to be suffering from an intellectual malnutrition in their poor performances at schools. Universities have endorsed degrees in computer games, and it is useless to look there for due answers. Shepherd has also called into question many statements made by or about various organisations appearing on the internet. While he acknowledged the ability of the internet to convey information, until very recently he preferred to use his thirty-five years old Olympia Monica typewriter, emphasising that a browser screen can deceive or distract. For many years he resisted the prospect of a website, despite the commercial advantage this often confers. He recently capitulated to advice for internet resort via assisting technicians. Yet he insisted upon a website more complex than is the norm for publishers, stipulating the reproduction of his recent confrontational epistles and other documents relating to current issues.
In 2007 he started to use a computer after encountering difficulties in launching this website. When the website appeared in late August 2007, he found that independent booksellers supported his standpoint, and that even certain of the formerly indifferent retail chains started to advertise his books. Yet he maintains independence from the latter, and has emphasised the extent to which large numbers of relevant academic books are left in a limbo of "available to orders only," the commercial shelves instead being filled so often with books of little or no educational consequence.
The high-tech entertainment industry which now floods computer markets is just one symptom of the multi-faceted distractions that offset the educational potential of the Web. Drawbacks to that potential have included the disconcerting factor of American business concerns utilising deceptive “black hat” techniques to boost their rankings with Google. Marketing plans can cause confusions and bad habits. In the book trade, retail chain policies frequently do not maintain a due standard, and there is considerable scope for disagreement about educational priorities even in some universities, including the American trend to favour psychedelic transpersonalism.
General trends attested in recent years in Britain are the diminishing number of independent bookselling shops and the chain bookshop policy of deleting backlists. The Bookseller recently included an article on the independent booksellers, a sector which has been predicted to face extinction within fifteen years if the current rate of shop closures continues. Major causes of this feared demise are increased competition from chains and supermarkets. The principle of commercial monopoly creates endangered species. Online selling has also been mentioned as a causative factor, though backlists might similarly become extinct without that recourse.