Philip Gale--From a Friend
after receiving email about the phil gale memorial website, for which i am deeply grateful to its caretaker, i spent an hour or so reading through all the posts concerning phil and his connection to scientology. i must
admit, i was amazed, and feel phil would be somewhat amused, by all the speculation caused by his death, the date upon which he chose to end it all, and the ensuing fallout throughout the net community.
i worked closely with phil at earthlink from october 95 until his departure back to MIT. in that time, we became what i consider to be close friends. we connected professionally, academically, and socially. he had
been and would become further interested in my chosen field of graduate study, cognitive science. we talked about that, about programming, about women, about music, about whatever... it was only after getting
to know him well that i found out that he ever was a scientologist, as just previous to our meeting that phil seriously questioned and abandoned scientology, if not publically, at least privately.
although i too was shaken by the news of his suicide, it was not altogether surprising. he, like many other 'child prodigies,' had problems understanding and communicating in the world in which he found himself.
moreover, he was easily bored and always restless -- mentally, physically, and emotionally.
he was no more reclusive than most very bright people--a reclusivity borne of necessity, not genetics. his, like those of other brilliant people, was a strange world, where he 'had to behave; in a way not really
befitting his chronological age, but more like those around him. being technically brilliant made it all the harder--he seemed removed from those around him differing both in age and in knowledge. so although we
were good friends, i would not understand something he had said or done, because, as he often put it, i was generation X, he was generation "why?".
far and away, he was the most brilliant, most intuitive programmer i have ever met, so even amongst his 'peers,' which i consider myself lucky to be branded by him, he really had no peer. it was often hard to
discern and even harder to remember that, at heart, he was just a teenager, plagued with all the normal teenage anxieties as well as those thrust upon him by the demands of a world in need of his talents. and
when it came to discussing his thoughts about scientology, he had few around who knew it anywhere near the level he did, having been brought up believing it was the only way. beyond the first questioning of the
belief system handed you by your parents upon entering college, i could help no further, not having been scientologist myself.
one thing is sure, however--he left scientology long before departing earthlink. the long lasting effects, who knows. my own survival to the ripe old age of 32 is no testament to the benefits nor a condemnation of
modern psychiatry for 'child prodigies,' but rather a failure of my own self-destructive impulses to succeed on their terms. and although he may have left scientology, it is unclear as to whether or not it left him. in
the end, who knows? it was i who first introduced him to the church of the subgenius when i bought him a copy of 'Revelation X' -- a discovery waiting to happen. he fell in love with it immediately, and read it in
far more detail than i ever did. what that says about his need to find a new belief system i can only hazard a guess -- he had found comfort in numbers. it was a comfort hard to share, but share he did, even in the
so-called 'scientology days' of earthlink, which to the best of my knowledge lasted not much longer than phil did at earthlink, if that long. yeah, its effects are still felt in subtle ways, but the management
methodology itself was gone, at least in the information technologies group, long before i departed in january of 97.
but i digress.
as for what phil was thinking that night, why he chose friday the 13th, "elron's" birthday, as he would say, to end his life, and many other questions for which there may be answers to me are just the legacy of what
it was like to be phil. as misunderstood as he seemed in life, so he remains in the afterlife--a statement of what only phil really knows, the rest of us have to guess.
thanx again to everyone involved in keeping his memory alive. it is a gesture he himself took on for his dad after his death. after returning from the services, phil sent an email explaining the growing number of 'x'
files in directories on various servers around earthlink. it was a testament to his dad, who, always in need of someplace to temporarily store some information, used files he named he named 'x'.
for phil, an 'x'-file of your own:
ls / x
brian ladner
|
|
