February 9,2023

Dear Nikola,

Thank you very much for your letter. A message from you is always a source of much satisfaction and often of relief. Nathaniel's most consistent inquiry is: "Have you heard from Nikola?"

Your argument, if I understand you correctly, that spiritual, including intellectual, excellence were fostered in Renaissance times at the courts of the numerous principalities of Europe, is congenial and persuasive to me. Very close to home is the story of Duchess Anna Amalia of Braunschweig.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchess_Anna_Amalia_of_Brunswick-Wolfenb%C3%BCttel  As you know many artists and writers began their careers, and some spent their lives as tutors of the children of the wealthy and aristocratic rulers of society. More recently uniform public education has become compulsory.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education I ask myself, and I ask you whether the translation of education into a public utility has affected culture, perhaps enhancing but possibly also degrading it.

Your essay about government was of interest to me, especially in the context of my own writing which I am admittedly pursuing at this time with only insufficient vigor. In the ninth volume of my novel, I describe a government which has succumbed to digitalization. All bureaucrats have been dismissed or have absconded, all files and filing cabinets have been recycled, the rooms, emptied of desks, are stocked with arrays of networked digital computers, programmed to record the written and spoken words, the facial expressions, the movements, and of course, the locations of all citizens and immigrants. This google of data is then statistically analysed to determine the mean, and government is reduced (or compounded) to the public sacrifice of all persons whose electronic profiles deviate more than a specified percentage from the average, a percentage computed by artificial intelligence such to specify the numbers of sacrifices sufficient to maintain public tranquillity. When the herd is sufficiently homogeneous, it will mind its own business and stay out of trouble.  The only government official required is a programmer to maintain the software. His name, in memory of the C++ language, is Jeremias Zehplus.  You can infer that my literary computer program has possibilities.

I close with my very best wishes for your safety and well-being.  I look forward to your being back in Massachusetts.

EJM