THE MEAGAN DREAM

THE MEAGAN DREAM

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 3, 2009

BACKGROUND

Meagan was our calico cat who died while we were in Europe in 2003. BB and Jennifer were quite close to her. I got to know her on my own when we were in Europe in the 1980s, so Meagan was quite old when she passed on.

Meagan would jump up on my desk or my computer while I was working. I would pick her up and put her outside the door of my study, and she would sit there until I opened it to go for more coffee. Then she would scoot back in, and repeat her behavior until I finally relented and left the door open.

We had this huge place in Brussels with high ceilings and large rooms. I'm something of a cleannik and would vacuum whenever I saw cat litter on the carpet. European litter would stick to Meagan's paws, but it must have seemed like punishment because once the vacuum cleaner came out she would fly to a rafter, head for one of the bathrooms, or camp high on the woodwork overlooking the fireplace.

Meagan never liked the vacuum cleaner, so I would forewarn her, "I have to vacuum now." Hearing the word, "vacuum" would find her moving slowly out of sight and harm's way. It was when I didn't warn her that she would show panic.

Over the years as a writer with BB in her professional job as an accountant and business manager, the two of us home, alone, I would talk to her about my writing, my ideas, about my concerns, even my angers.

Meagan would sit there attentively with her ears perked up acting as if she was listening no doubt thinking she shared the space with a disturbed man.

No athlete in my experience could leap from one bookcase to another, or from one tall stanchion to another with such grace and poetry. Even flying from the carpet to a sofa or chair was a matter of exquisite grace and poetry. I would tell her that if I had had such athleticism I would have been a professional basketball player. She would cock her head to the side as if to say, "Don't you wish!"

Our affection for each other was gradual, very gradual, as I came into her space unannounced with little interest in domesticated animals much less a highly athletic and intelligent cat. It didn't take me long, however, to respect her independence, appreciate her self-reliance, or marvel at her hygiene, dutifully licking her paws and constantly grooming her beautiful calico coat. Why I should dream of her now is as much a mystery to me as it might be to my sharing it with you, but here it is.


THE DREAM OF MEAGAN

It is very hot. I am in the city. I have taken off my jacket and long sleeve shirt and tied them around my waist. I am carrying Meagan under my right arm. Meagan is small and light and yet my wet T-shirt is matted to my skin and her beautiful coat is matted and snarled with sweat as well. I can't put her down because I'm afraid she will run off and get lost. Since I am already lost and struggling to find my way, I am consumed with that possibility.

As a rule, she doesn't like to be held. I don't like it. But it would seem there is an understanding this is the best of all possible worlds for us at the moment. I say this because she makes no attempt to jump down and run off.

We have been walking down narrow streets, climbing streets that seem almost perpendicular, always coming out more lost than ever. Nothing seems familiar. People pass by and ignore us as if we are invisible.

Meagan and I are not only hot and sweaty, but also hungry and thirsty because we haven't eaten or rested for hours.

Finally, we come out of the claustrophobic and stultifying heat of the city into the open countryside. There are no trees; no relief from the heat as the sun beats down on us unmercifully.

"I've got to put you down, Meagan," I say, "and you can walk beside me like a dog walks beside its master." She turns her head and looks up at me with pinpoints of contempt. "Honest," I continue, "you'll find it will be cooling and far less clammy not having to share my body heat."

I put her down, and start walking. I look back. She has not moved. Dust is blowing in her face but she's paying it no mind. She is standing there on all fours staring at me.

"Now what's wrong?" I ask, "Is it what I said? Is it because I compared you to a dog?"

She cocks her head to the side. Her ears perk up. "Well, I'm sorry. I'm not myself. I'm lost. I'm tired. And if you want to know the truth I'm just a little bit desperate. So, I could use a little understanding." She doesn't take her eyes off me.

"You ought to know by now I'm not at my best when I'm upset. Well, I'm upset now, okay? All I know is to go forward. I don't know anything else. I haven't any answers. If we don't get some water soon, I'll tell you this much, it'll all be academic. Understand?"

Meagan still doesn't move. "Have it your way. I'll get down on all my fours and say I'm sorry for bringing up the subject of dogs, okay?" I get down next to her and she jumps on my shoulder. I get up and cradle her in my arms. She snuggles her head in the crook of my neck and purrs. "I don't believe it. You would rather be hot and clammy than feeling the cool breeze?" I shake my head. She snuggles closer.

Then for the first time I feel her blood throbbing through her little body, feel the rhythm of her heart, and know she is as scared as I am, that she feels we might be in the hands of destiny and won't come out of this alive. Knowing this, her pulsing body tells me she wouldn't mind a little discomfort. I squeeze her gently. She purrs knowing why.

The road is open, dusty and seemingly endless, as if it will drop off to nothing. A piece of debris catches me in the eye and I feel my eye tearing. I shiver a little feeling sweat trickle down my spine. I look down to see if Meagan notices. She only snuggles closer. Somehow this feels reassuring.

At last, up ahead there is a gas station with an attached broken down building made into a restaurant. No cars are outside. Flies are everywhere and the screen door has holes in it. A bell jingles when we enter.

"No animals allowed in her, mister," a lady says with a flabby face hair in curlers and a cigarette dangling from her lips.

"This isn't an animal. This is Meagan my cat and we just want a drink of water."

"Got any money?"

I shake my head, "No."

"Got a credit card?"

"No."

"Then you best be off."

"All we want is some water."

"What's the problem, Myrtle?" A voice cries out from the back room.

"No problem, Oscar, this fellow is leaving, aren't you, mister?"

With slumping shoulders brushing the flies off both of us, I push the screen door and feel the dust blowing in my face. No sooner did I experience this, and try to wipe my eyes then Meagan squirms frantically, her paws scratching my arm as she leaps to the ground, reminding me of how she acts when I'm about to take her to the vet's.

She runs off and I followed her to the back of the place where there is a rain-collecting basin. How she knew it was there I don't know but she did. She cups her front paws under her and buries her face in the watering lapping it up nosily as if she has never tasted water before.

I drop down beside her, cup my hands into the water and gulp it down but still noting its slightly metallic taste, but it is a feast nonetheless. We will survive!

Then I wake up.

THE FALLACY OF HOPE

THE FALLACY OF HOPE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 22, 2009

* * *

“My principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you.”

Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), Anglo-Irish poet, satirist and clergyman


* * *


THE AUDACITY OF HOPE EXPOSED


You that read me know my disdain for the concept of hope as compared to the idea of courage.

Courage is active and positive. Hope is passive and wishful thinking.

Courage requires doing something even if it is wrong. Hope looks to someone else to do the dirty work.

Courage operates from a position of taking control. Hope surrenders control expecting someone else to manage the outcome.

Courage entails risk, possible failure, and often setbacks. Hope places that responsibility and authority on someone else.

Courage doesn’t react to circumstances. It anticipates them and takes action. Hope shields itself from action by projecting blame when things go awry.

Courage embraces the challenge with gusto. Hope is prisoner to outcomes.

In baseball, a ground ball can be zooming at an infielder at 90 mph. He can charge the ball and embrace the challenge or sit back and play for a good hop. Should he choose the latter, chances are the runner will cross first base before his throw gets there, or he’ll be fooled by the hop and commit an error.

Major League infielders charge the ball. Amateurs often look for the good hop.

There is no audacity to hope when not structured around courage.

* * *

In my long life, it would seem increasingly so that there is little difference whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power. Neither party seems able to escape an obsession with hope.

Both parties are controlled by corporate masters through an army of lobbyists who eclipse the political democratic process by dictating the corporate will.

Eisenhower called it the “military industrial complex, but now it permeates every quadrant of American society. It is evident in the current charade on healthcare, as it was and continues to be evident in the administration's ambivalence towards the War in Afghanistan.

The agents of the puppet masters are not elected to public office but they control the day.

Barak Obama got my vote, despite being disparaged by his campaign book, “Audacity of Hope” (2006). I forgave him for this, thinking it was simply a campaign strategy to get elected, confident, once elected, he would display the courage that change necessitates.

What I see thus far feels strangely like déjà vu, or Bush all over again. Columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan claims President Obama is not a natural decider. Obama is proving the pundit correct. I have worked for such men. They see themselves as prudent not realizing they are paralyzed with fear of making a decision.

We have a president-in-training with practical no corporate decision making experience. This was also true of Abraham Lincoln, but he was a successful practicing attorney in Springfield, Illinois, and was considered reasonably wealthy when he took office.

President George W. Bush had an executive background. He turned his back on his family’s fortune (something his brother, Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, didn’t), left the northeast and went wildcatting for oil in Texas, struck it rich after many failed attempts, and established his own successful company. He became a majority owner of the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball, and continued in that capacity until he sold his interests at a handsome profit.

Bush's nemesis was the neoconservatives who owned him, including Vice President Chaney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. They talked him into a preemptive War in Iraq, when Afghanistan was where Al-Qaeda was entrenched. He is now saddled with that legacy thanks to the neocons, who have gone on their merry ways unscathed.

* * *

More than 10,000 books have been written on Lincoln. I’ve managed to read a few. I think it unfair to compare President Obama to him or his presidency. Lincoln is remembered for his eloquence, for the Emancipation Proclamation, and for winning the Civil War, but the man he was is buried in subtext.

Lincoln may have been honest, but he was also tough, some thought vicious, as he never acted in half measures.

When he was a young man he was quite a wrestler, long, sinewy, and deceptively strong. He would allow his opponent to flex his muscles, make scary, and then quickly pin him to his opponent’s embarrassment. Lincoln didn’t believe in telegraphing his moves but exploited his rival’s weakness with animal like agility.

During the Civil War, Lincoln had a pusillanimous general-in-chief of the Union Army, George Brinton McClellan, nicknamed “The Young Napoleon.” He was a man with impeccable military credentials, good breeding and flawless sophistication, but otherwise a spineless wonder when it came to making decisions on the battlefield.

McClellan was also insubordinate. Lincoln removed him and for a time was general-in-chief of the army as well as commander-in-chief of the nation. Lincoln, by all accounts, was decisive, cold, calculating, and unyielding to the enemy in his battlefield strategies. After the war, there was an effort to try him as a war criminal citing these directives.

A talent for leadership is derived from a sense of character that is not always obvious or limited by pedigree. Lincoln went deep into the ranks of his generals before he found Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman to lead his army to a bloody but decisive conclusion, one in which Grant often had huge casualties for his victories, while Sherman’s “March to the Sea” left in his wake a scorched earth.

There was nothing tentative here.


* * *

A surprising role model for our inexperienced president might be President Andrew Jackson. Jackson and Obama, at first glance, might seem like an odd couple: Jackson was crude, intemperate, could be a bully, and yet mastered the eastern establishment and became the people’s president much as Obama did in his getting elected.

The “Age of Jackson” followed the Jackson presidency.

My sense is that under the cool detachment, fine manners, savoir-faire eloquence of Obama is a man of grit that hasn’t yet been allowed to surface. He has by most estimates a fine mind, perhaps finer than most men who have held that office, but a fine mind is not enough. Nor does the job require an intellectual, which he is also said to be. "Give intellectuals everything," advises author Eric Hoffer, "but never give them power."

Jackson was far from an intellectual. He preferred his own counsel to that provided in books, no doubt influenced by the fact he was self-educated with practically no former schooling. He had fought in the Revolutionary War as a fourteen-year-old boy, and every war thereafter up to his presidency.

Jackson was a self-made man as well acquiring considerable wealth by the time he was president, having practiced law, farmed, and served in Congress. He knew Wall Street and the banking lobby in real terms, not abstractedly and academically. He would take on the banking industry and beat it at its own game.

To say Jackson was decisive is to understate his impact. He sized up his enemies and the odds and took action. It didn’t matter whether it was political opponents, members of Congress, his cabinet, eastern bankers, or foreign powers.

Lobbyist and influence peddlers were as endemic to Jackson’s Washington as they are today, but he would have none of them. He dispatched them without a second thought. Nor would he let members of his own cabinet, mostly the Washington elite, dictate his agenda.

When members of his cabinet failed to include the wife of his Secretary of War, he dissolved the cabinet, and appointed his friends. For this, his administration was known as the “spoils system.” That said every president since has benefited from the "Office of the President" that he created, making it the most powerful branch of the federal government.


* * *

President Obama, too, has surrounded himself with like-minded people, many from the financial industry that happen to be key players in the Wall Street meltdown and subsequent recession. He has also shown an inclination to media pundits, thinkers not doers, influence peddlers, not decision makers.

He would be well to note how Lincoln took office. Lincoln was wise in knowing what he did well (his strengths) and what he did not do so well (his weaknesses), appointing a cabinet of competent men who thought him a country bumpkin, and not worthy of the presidency. By doing so, he magnified his strengths and neutralized his weaknesses. In the process, he became stronger and more resilient than any member of his cabinet, and was on his way to greatness.

When we surround ourselves with others of similar weaknesses we reinforce and magnify our own. If the weakness is decision making, this can lead to the paralysis of analysis


* * *.

President Obama is making nice with Europe, and it would appear, Europe loves him for it (70 percent approval rating) far more than Americans do (50 percent approval rating) if you can believe the polls. He has made nice with Russia by withdrawing the Bush Missile Defense Shield from Eastern Europe, but in terms of quid pro quo has received nothing for the concession.

Any executive knows there is a world of difference between being nice and being effective. You can make nice when it is effective, but being effective is not always making nice. Being hated by some no matter how noble or appropriate the action is par for the course.

Jackson and Lincoln had similar challenges and acted similarly, preserving the nation at any cost. They recognized the dangers and did what was necessary, not necessarily popular. Controversy was white noise in the background. Courage was the order of the day, not hope.


* * *

With all the major problems of the nation and the world, radio talking heads and the Fox News Network have gotten President Obama’s attention. This is unfortunate. Legitimizing these chatterboxes puts the president in a bad light. I would imagine someone has advised him of this strategy. That person should be fired immediately. He or she is no friend to the administration.

Incredibly, Time (September 28, 2009) had Glenn Beck’s picture on the cover of its magazine, a person I had never heard of before. I know who Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Howard Stern are, but have never listened to them, much less this man with his tongue stuck out on the cover of Time. Wonderful!

The measure of these talking heads’ appeal, and others like them suggests we have lost our pride and dignity, our good manners and sense of proportion, our reasoned thought, and intellectual balance.

Have we lost so much confidence that we can no longer do our own thinking? Do we need these interlopers to do it for us? Are we to rely on people who short circuit the issues to lay on us their biases? They have a right to their opinions, to promulgate them in any media they prefer, but we don't have to accept them as our own. That seems bizarre, but come to think of it, this is a bizarre age.


* * *

DIFFERENT ENDINGS TO -- OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT

A WRITER WRITES:

A reader writes about the first and second draft of this article:

Hello Jim,

You know better what you want to say. In my humble opinion, the last paragraphs of the first version had more impact and meaning. It sounded more like your voice than the second ending.

Michael

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

It was past 3 a.m. and I thought it best to change the ending of the piece. It is the reader that should have the final say as to the integrity of the piece given his or her familiarity with the writing. In rereading, I agree with this writer.

While I'm on the subject, speaking of the immaturity of adults, I attended just last Thursday a volley ball match between a team of eighth graders from the local recreational center and my granddaughter prep school.

The rec center's team was far superior to my granddaughters, and beat her team badly. What disturbed me, however, was that the rec center's coach played only his first team nearly the whole game, while the prep team coach played all her players during the whole contest.

The rec center coach, while calling the prep school coach "dearie" after the game, said he played only to win. It seems beyond his capacity to fathom that he was in the business of building character of these young people, and that comparing and competing was secondary to this function. Sad.

HERE ARE THE TWO VERSIONS and POSTINGS:


SECOND POSTING AND VERSION TWO:

The air is not more rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual ever separated from the squalor and demands below. It is rather from a vantage point of on high that one sees more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something.

Wherever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you're talking to someone, please look that person in the eye. Don't mount a ladder and peer down on that person as if the person were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don't wear your kudos or awards like medals on your ego, but let the person sense your worth from the connection with you.

* * *

Mentoring is about helping people help themselves by showing them how to realize and harness their unique gifts. This website (www.fisherofideas.com) encourages that process. The individual's lot in life is to find out what makes that person tick, what gets that person off its bottom and do something, to have some purpose, and ultimately, effectively utilize one's inherent ability.


AUTISM REDUX

One reason we don't know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic.

What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of parents, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. A child can sense when he or she is considered a burden.

With the United States the most affluent society on the globe, it is sad to say many children are largely left in the lurch. This is not limited to the most impoverished of homes, but is a problem among the affluent as well. Neglect has no socioeconomic boundaries.

Add to this complexity many parents have failed to cross that imposing barrier of mature adulthood. My sense is that children are not victims of raging autism but inattentive parents.

Having children will not hold a loveless marriage together. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease by imploding it with unwanted guests. We have settled on the idea that making a good living is the central responsibility of the family when it is the nurturing of children. Nurturing is taken as a given when it is the most demanding of skills.

When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to give, and usually it is time and attention to the needs of children.

Adding to this spiral is the incessant drive to compare and compete with parents using their children as the instruments of their designs. Small wonder there is such problems finding one's essence, or developing the essence of one's children. The obstacles to self-realization are not new to readers, as I'm sure they have their own stories to illustrate the challenge.

* * *

FIRST POSTING AND VERSION ONE:

The air is not rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual at such a height separated from the squalor below. But rather, it is a vantage point to see more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something about it.

Whatever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you're talking to me, please look me in the eye. Don't mount a ladder and peer down on me as if I were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don't wear your kudos or awards like medals on your person, but let me sense your essence from the insight I gain from my connection with you.

* * *

The greatest reward in life is to help others help themselves, to help them to realize and harness their unique gifts. It is the purpose of these missives on this website (www.fisherofideas.com) to encourage that process.

In no way is this an attempt to have others follow in my footsteps. That said the greatest opportunity to self-realization is to compare and compete only with oneself irrespective of anyone else. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty in this regard is temptation to measure oneself in terms of others and what others have accomplished. This is a predictor of remorse and self-defeat as the irony of life is you can never be better than a poor imitation of someone else no matter what you have achieved as measured by what they have realized.

Your lot in life is to find out what makes you tick, what gets you to rise off your bottom and to do something, to be someone, to have some purpose, to effectively utilize your inherent ability.

* * *

One reason we don't know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic. What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of adults, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. Even a child can sense he or she is a burden. The most affluent society on earth has left its children largely in the lurch. Added to this complexity is that most parents have failed to cross that mantle into mature adulthood. My sense is that children, despite the statistics to the contrary, are not victims of raging autism but rather lifestyle diseases of their parents.

Given this predicament, many dysfunctional marriages have children to hold the marriage together, and implode the marriage instead. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease with such an intervention. In a compare and compete society, the most important job of breadwinners is believed to be that of making a good living with it assumed that nurturing of children is a given and will materialize as if by osmosis in the lap of affluence. Not so. When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to suffer, and it is usually time and attention to the needs of the children.

Adding to this turmoil is that of a marriage where one parent compares and competes with the other parent, finding ways to nullify his or her gain or advantage, even sabotaging the mate's effort to the confusion of the children who are witness to the drama. The obstacles to self-realization are these and every reader knows someone engaged with them at the moment. I hope it is not the reader.

* * *

WHICH VERSION DO YOU FIND MORE APPROPRIATE?

THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT!

THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT---from the pages of CONFIDENT THINKING

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 17, 2009

REFERENCE:

My computer developed multiple viruses. For more than two weeks, I was unable to transcribe my thoughts generated during my daily walks. A strange thing happened. Nothing came to me as I walked. My computer is now healthy. Wondering has returned.

We use the word “virus” with our computer when it goes on the blink as if a computer is a living thing, while we use engineering terms to describe our mechanistic society. This unconscious process gives psychological identity to the inanimate, and then leads to our entrapment in its confinement. Notice how we talk about thinking outside the box, when it is the metaphor of the box that is the structure of our thought.

* * *

Those who read me know I process the past in terms of a personal narrative. In so doing, I leave out many things that don’t readily fit into the story telling. By focusing on ordinary events within the parameters of my experience, I note things we usually take for granted or leave out being overwhelmed by the problem solving.

Stories have a way of getting inside such obstacles to reveal truths buried in the perturbations. A wonderer exploits this advantage, leaving it up to the reader to assess its relevance or the quality of the wondering.

* * *


WHO DO YOU TRUST?

A person was telling me the other day about a set of boy twins, age four, who appeared much slower than a set of girl twins of the same age of another family. She picked to pieces the differences between the twins in quite knowing terms, implying something was wrong with the boys. But is there? How can we be sure?

Boys are typically slower than girls out of the starting blocks of life. Yet medical science on slim evidence has placed many parents near panic with the idea that autism is a pervasive condition.

Psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim some forty years ago got it all wrong when he headed the prestigious Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. He treated autism as a behavioral and psychological condition when understood today to be a brain disorder, a disorder nonetheless that is not clearly understood.

Autism has become the catchall phrase to mask developmental concerns. Neurological brain dysfunction is difficult to identify, yet often diagnosed by physicians and psychologists arbitrarily on behavioral evidence, alone. A series of qualifying autistic related indices are subjective at best and imprecise at worse, and can be misleading. It is therefore wise for parents to seek a second and third prognosis before they go into a panic.

We are an explanatory culture good at describing our problems but not necessarily proficient at defining or resolving them. Currently, autism is on the front burner. It is a condition the medical profession is reporting with increasing frequency, especially with regard to its appearance in boys, but is this reporting reliable?

Parents trust the authority of medicine, and well that they should, when medicine is on solid ground. In the case of autism, however, it remains something of a medical mystery. The AMA has not been too candid about this fact. Pharmaceuticals are being used with autism as with Alzheimer’s, and we know how little is known about that disease.

What is known is that some children are late or circuitous bloomers. This is but one example.


DIRK DEVLIN, A STORY OF LATE AND AMBIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT

Buried in all these statistics and the anguish caused by them is a basic cultural phenomenon that has no limitations. It is the tendency to compare and compete, to view one child against another child as to how those respective children embrace and deal with life.

There is a real danger of self-fulfilling prophecy by designating and treating some children as fast and other children as slow learners. I am not at all certain these boys are slow. It reminds me of the case of Dirk Devlin.

* * *

Dirk was considered slow as a boy coming from a dysfunctional situation. Out of the trauma of his early existence, he turned out to be a loner, which he remained during his developmental years.

For the first five years of his life, he lived with foster parents or relatives but not with his birth parents. His father was wild and mainly unemployed, and his mother was in a sanitarium having suffered a mental breakdown after having three children in four years, and weighing only eighty pounds on a five-one frame.

Dirk lived with his great aunt and great uncle during part of this period, and found himself with many of his cousins, as several of the parents of these children were in various states of divorce, separation or family abandonment.

His great aunt owned and ran a tenement house with ample space for all these relatives, but not sufficient energy for the parenting. His great uncle ran a successful commercial roofing business.

The aunt had a special affection for Dirk as she had also reared his father, who was left parentless when his mother died in childbirth and his father took off never to be seen again. She could see Dirk was a child who preferred to be alone finding no reason to force him to play with the other children.

Not only was he a loner, but once he started to school he refused to talk. The nuns designated him as slow and put him in the slow section of the class. He found this strange as he identified with the more alert students, and loved listening to them recite in class. He loved school. He found it safe, secure, orderly, and controlled. It had structure something he had not experienced before.

Written work delighted him but he still refused to participate in class. Was this shyness? Could it be insecurity? Did he fear being embarrassed? That is what the nuns concluded, so they left him alone.

* * *

Years later, looking back, Dirk decided it wasn’t any of these things. He had a hunger to learn and felt no advantage when he was talking. Even in that tenement house he would watch the other children, study the way they behaved and marvel at some of the things they would do and say, but he had no desire to join them in the doing.

A big child for his age, he was always thought to be older than he was as he was taller and huskier than most others of his generation being six foot by the age of fourteen and still growing despite having a mother of five-one and a father of five-seven. When you are tall as a boy, people tend to think you are more mature than you are. He suffered for that perception, as he was quite immature.

Perhaps Dirk's greatest blessing was that his great aunt and mother never attempted to change him but accepted him as he was. The result was that he changed as his interior dial or center developed, which would become the key to his idiosyncratic character.

* * *

Dirk never became competitive, never cared to be anyone else, never looked for a hero with whom to identify, and for this skewed orientation away from the norm he became an unusually strong personality, a conundrum and frustration to many.

The good nuns taught him he was not on earth to punish other with his talents or bother them with his problems, but to develop his talents and use them to the benefit of others. It was their job as educators to identify these talents, give them life and expression, and define their usefulness.

Nuns, he discovered, were not without venial subjectivity.

Dirk might receive the highest grade on a test, but was apt to hear, “Nice job, Seamus,“ as the nuns (and his mother) preferred his given name, "but what a surprise!" Even his most supportive nun, his eighth grade teacher, who applauded his skills as a basketball player and budding scholar of Catholic doctrine, drew the line when it came to special competitions.

The sixth, seventh and eighth grade students participated in a spelling bee elimination competition to see who would represent the school in the County Spelling Bee Contest. Dirk won the competition. Expected to win was John, a genuine prodigy, a gifted student, and a classical pianist of the first rank.

Dirk's teacher and the school principal took Dirk aside and sat him down and said, “You won the contest, Seamus, but we think we will have a better chance of winning the county contest if John represents the school.”

A puzzled expression crossed Dirk’s face as he attempted to process this information. “Stir, I don’t understand. I thought I won the contest?”

“Well, let us put it this way,” his teacher told him, “it seems all the easy words came your way, and all the hard words came to John.”

Anger welled up in him; anger was a dominant humor to his personality. He wanted to say, but Sister, I knew all the words, every one of them. He didn’t say anything out of respect for this special nun whom he loved.

He was discovering that he had a good memory; that he could see in his mind a page reference in a book, or find a quote without much trouble.

It was a gift his mother had, but a talent that had gotten him into trouble when he was at university. Professors thought he was cheating when clearly he was not. It wasn’t confined to printed words. He could remember lectures nearly verbatim, and what people had said months ago, but now denied. It amazed him how often people lied, how easily they would forget what they had said before, as if they had never said it.

* * *

Disconcerted by the nuns' put down, but also relieved, he now recalled what his mother had said: “You are high strung, Seamus. You don’t handle stress well. You must be better prepared than anyone else because if you’re not the floodgates will open and all hell will break lose reducing you to a blabbering idiot.”

This proved true years later in an organic chemistry test at university. Dirk went into the test with an “A” average, looked at the test, and panicked, getting a 52 percent on an “F.” He was shocked and dismayed but had the temerity to visit his professor. “I think I lost it,” he confessed.

“Yes, I think you did,” his professor agreed, taking out his grade book. “Your lowest grade before was a 92, and a 52 on this test. What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re here to see what we can do about it, is that right?”

Dirk remained silent.

“Well, sir,” the professor continued, “I’ll put it this way. You no longer have an ‘A’ average, which is 90 percent, averaging this grade into your previous tests, but you’re close. That said if you average 90 percent or more on the rest of your tests this semester I’ll omit this grade from your average, fair enough?”

That surprising concession added motivation. The next test was quite different than any of the previous tests. There were only three problems, but the problems involved equations that took up more than a page each with the requirement of not only the correct sequence of reactions but also the suitable catalysts to produce the ultimate product in the end.

It was a conceptual framework rather than a regurgitation of formulae as had been the case before. A light went on in Dirk’s head from the beginning with him breezing through the test to finish before anyone else. He got a 100 percent with the next closest score 72 percent and the class average 39 percent.

He made an appointment to see the professor trying to understand the departure from the professor's previous format.

“I gave that type of test,” he conceded, “because I could see where you panicked. Then I wondered if my students were getting a grasp of organic chemistry as it applied to the real world of industry. Your performance on the previous test suggested I had my work cut out for me. How do you explain your turnaround?”

“I studied especially hard.”

“No, I don’t think that’s the reason.”

“Then I don’t know.”

“There is a lot to remember in an organic chemistry course and both the professor and student have only limited time. Straight memory was difficult for me as a student. I think it is for you as well.” Dirk nodded but had no idea where this was going.


“That is because we have to see the relationship of the equations to the process. We find with straight memory it is difficult to recall the connection of isolated equations, am I right?” Dirk nodded again out of politeness, but not conviction. Sensing this, the professor added, “There is something I want you to take forward in your life.”

“What is that?”

“Conceptual thinking is the building blocks to understanding of anything, and fundamental to thinking in chemistry." He laughed. "A long time ago when I was a student a professor had this kind of discussion with me. It made sense to me then. I hope it makes sense to you now. It is probably why you have a good memory."


Surprise cross Dirk's face. "You showed off some on this test." This caused Dirk to squirm. "I'm speaking of the listing of alternative catalysts and their concomitant diversions from the desired product. That little conceit reflected your exhilaration, as if to say, 'I get it!' I smiled when I saw it."

The professor continued. "The test you failed didn't show this premise." He studied Dirk. "Why do you think that test threw you off? Do you know?”

“I think so.”

“Do you want to share that with me?”

“Not really. It’s so stupid. When I get upset my mind seems to leave me. If you want to know the truth, I was surprised with my 52 because I finished the test in a fog. I thought I had gotten a zero.”

* * *

Dirk thanked his professor and then went back to his dormitory room. He sat there and thought about what the professor had said. He wondered if it were true. Then he remembered something that had happened in high school.

In a class in advanced mathematics covering analytical and solid geometry and spherical trigonometry, his math teacher, whom he thought was the best teacher he ever had, gave the class a national test at midterm of the first semester of that year. His teacher had such a gift at explaining mathematical concepts that Dirk looked forward to each session.

When the results came back, the math teacher congratulated the students on how well they had done finding the majority in the class of only twelve students far exceeded the national average. Dirk, however, did poorly on the test, and was thoroughly flummoxed.

He went to see his math teacher who assured him that the test would not be averaged into his grade. “I wanted to see how we stacked up with advanced students across the country,” the math teacher said, “and I was generally pleased with the results.” This burned into Dirk’s psyche as if he were branded, which he thought he had been.

“What happened, Dirk?”

“The only thing I can say is that I was premed for the test but after I got to the third or fourth problem my mind went blank. I didn’t even finished.”

“I noticed that.” Dirk just sat there still as a mouse. “Don’t worry about it.”

As he left the room, he repeated to himself, don’t worry about it! Easy for him to say. He couldn't wait for football practice where he could hit somebody. He wondered, am I a learner or a knower, a pretender or for real? I thought I was learning mathematics. Was I kidding myself?

* * *

Towards the end of that year Dirk’s math class had another national test. Dirk finished in the 97 percentile, tied with the highest score in the class. He felt good about himself and shared it with his best friend who was also in the class.

His friend said, “You should have done well.”

“Why?”

“It was the same test we took last semester.”

“It was?”

“You didn’t recognize it?”

“No.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I mean it. I didn’t recognize the test.”

“Okay, okay.”

* * *

Dirk went back to his math teacher who was beaming as he approached. “How do you feel about yourself now?”

Incredulously, Dirk said, “Did you give us the same test again?”

“As a matter-of-fact, I did.”

“Why?”

“Well, I could say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I did it because I wanted to see what you would do with a second chance.”

“You did it for me?”

“No, not only for you, but you have done the best of the lot. You set the curve, young man. What did you learn from this?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, I've had you as a student for two years. I think it tells us something about you.”

“What is that?”

“You’re extremely intense, extremely serious. I’ve never once seen you relaxed or joking around in or out of class. I know you’re an athlete. I also know you hate that tag.”

“How do you know that?”

“Believe me it shows. You want others to respect you not only for playing with some kind of a ball but as a student, as a scholar.”

“That shows, too?”

“Oh, yes. You want to be taken seriously and have strong opinions. This can be frightening to some. They see your strengths and not your weaknesses, making matters worse, they exaggerate your strengths.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, I imagine it’s a matter of power. You’re a tall good-looking boy, a good athlete, active in extra curricular activities, honor student, and seem to have everything. Others notice that. It can be quite intimidating creating envy, jealousy and even fear. When people fear you, watch out.”

“But why? I don't see myself that way.”

“Because they don’t see the weaknesses in you that I do, because they only see your strengths and your advantages.”

“Well, I don’t plan on changing.”

“That is obvious, but because of this and your intensity I’m afraid you’re going to walk into walls. Most of us compare and compete with others, and you simply won’t, worse yet, you won’t apologize for not. It makes you look arrogant as well as confident.”

“But I’m not that confident, and I don't see myself as arrogant.”

“Others would differ with you on that. They take a bead on others as to how they measure up, but you don't. You only compete with yourself. You demonstrated that last fall after doing poorly on the national test. You were the only one that came to me for an explanation, not in false humility, but to find out what was wrong and to correct it. You are your own laboratory. That is unique.”

“But is it right?”

“It is not a question of being right or not, but it’s you.”

“What advice do you give me?”

“I’m not like you, Dirk, but I admire integrity. I say despite the difficulties I think you will encounter, go for it! We need more like you and less like the rest of us. You’re flawed but authentic if I make myself clear. I suspect that will be your cross as well as your blessing.”

“Because I’m not going to change, is that it?”

Dirk’s math teacher didn’t answer. He put his papers in his briefcase signaling the session was over.


THE KEY TO IT ALL, MENTORS!

A person has the life that he has mainly because of his mentors along the way.

These people introduce the person to him or herself. They are most effective when they don’t try to change the person but instead identify the person to his or her uniqueness and then attempt to harness that uniqueness in some way.

There are people in positions of authority that attempt to suppress this uniqueness, and to make the person fit into a previously cast mode. The individual should be alert to such a possibility and to act accordingly.

Our inclination is to appreciate our true gifts only when others we respect point them out to us. How sad it is when this never happens.

If the central thrust of one's life is to cue on the accomplishments of others, imitating their progress, chances are one will never discover one's own nascent talents, but be a poor imitation of the other.

Psychiatrists Drs. Willard and Marguerite Beecher state this quite emphatically in “Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity” (1966):

“Competition enslaves and degrades the mind. It is on of the most prevalent and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who is devoid of originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!” (p. 56)

On the other hand, if someone recognizes your uniqueness, and breathes life into that uniqueness, you will climb to unimagined heights. We are always students in our quest for self-realization.

* * *

The air is not more rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual ever separated from the squalor and demands below. It is rather from a vantage point of on high that one sees more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something.

Wherever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you’re talking to someone, please look that person in the eye. Don’t mount a ladder and peer down on that person as if the person were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don’t wear your kudos or awards like medals on your ego, but let the person sense your worth from the connection with you.

* * *

Mentoring is about helping people help themselves by showing them how to realize and harness their unique gifts. This website (www.fisherofideas.com) encourages that process. The individual's lot in life is to find out what makes that person tick, what gets that person off its bottom and do something, to have some purpose, and ultimately, effectively utilize one's inherent ability.


AUTISM REDUX

One reason we don’t know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic.

What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of parents, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. A child can sense when he or she is considered a burden.

With the United States the most affluent society on the globe, it is sad to say many children are largely left in the lurch. This is not limited to the most impoverished of homes, but is a problem among the affluent as well. Neglect has no socioeconomic boundaries.

Add to this complexity many parents have failed to cross that imposing barrier of mature adulthood. My sense is that children are not victims of raging autism but inattentive parents.

Having children will not hold a loveless marriage together. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease by imploding it with unwanted guests. We have settled on the idea that making a good living is the central responsibility of the family when it is the nurturing of children. Nurturing is taken as a given when it is the most demanding of skills.

When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to give, and usually it is time and attention to the needs of children.

Adding to this spiral is the incessant drive to compare and compete with parents using their children as the instruments of their designs. Small wonder there is such problems finding one's essence, or developing the essence of one's children. The obstacles to self-realization are not new to readers, as I'm sure they have their own stories to illustrate the challenge.

* * *

OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT!

THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION,PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT---from the pages of CONFIDENT THINKING

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 16, 2009

REFERENCE:

My computer developed multiple viruses. For more than two weeks, I was unable to transcribe my thoughts generated during my daily walks. A strange thing happened. Nothing came to me as I walked. My computer is now healthy. Wondering has returned.

We use the word “virus” with our computer when it goes on the blink as if a computer is a living thing, while we use engineering terms to describe our mechanistic society. This unconscious process gives psychological identity to the inanimate, and then leads to our entrapment in its confinement. Notice how we talk about thinking outside the box, when it is the metaphore of the box that is the structure of our thought.

* * *

Those who read me know I process the past in terms of a personal narrative. In so doing, I leave out many things that don’t readily fit into the story telling. By focusing on ordinary events within the parameters of my experience, I note things we usually take for granted or leave out being overwhelmed by the problem solving.

Stories have a way of getting inside such obstacles to reveal truths buried in the perturbations. A wonderer exploits this advantage, leaving it up to the reader to assess its relevance or the quality of the wondering.

* * *


WHO DO YOU TRUST?

A person was telling me the other day about a set of boy twins, age four, who appeared much slower than a set of girl twins of the same age of another family. She picked to pieces the differences between the twins in quite knowing terms, implying something was wrong with the boys. But is there? How can we be sure?

Boys are typically slower than girls out of the starting blocks of life. Yet medical science on slim evidence has placed many parents near panic with the idea that autism is a pervasive condition.

Psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim some forty years ago got it all wrong when he headed the prestigious Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. He treated autism as a behavioral and psychological condition when understood today to be a brain disorder, a disorder nonetheless that is not clearly understood.

Autism has become the catchall phrase to mask developmental concerns. Neurological brain dysfunction is difficult to identify, yet often diagnosed by physicians and psychologists arbitrarily on behavioral evidence, alone. A series of qualifying autistic related indices are subjective at best and imprecise at worse, and can be misleading. It is therefore wise for parents to seek a second and third prognosis before they go into a panic.

We are an explanatory culture good at describing our problems but not necessarily good at defining or resolving them. Currently, autism is on the front burner. It is a condition the medical profession is reporting with increasing frequency, especially with regard to its appearance in boys, but is this reporting reliable?

Parents trust the authority of medicine, and well that they should, when medicine is on solid ground. In the case of autism, however, it remains something of a medical mystery. The AMA has not been too candid about this fact. Pharmaceuticals are being used with autism as with Alzheimer’s, and we know how little is known about that disease.

What is known is that some children are late or circuitous bloomers. This is but one example.


DIRK DEVLIN, A STORY OF LATE OR AMBIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT

Buried in all these statistics and the anguish caused by them is a basic cultural phenomenon that has no limitations. It is the tendency to compare and compete, to view one child against another child as to how those respective children embrace and deal with life.

There is a real danger of self-fulfilling prophecy by designating and treating some children as fast and other children as slow learners. I am not at all certain these boys are slow. It reminds me of the case of Dirk Devlin.

* * *

Dirk was considered slow as a boy coming from a dysfunctional situation. Out of the trauma of his early existence, he turned out to be a loner, which he remained during his developmental years.

For the first five years of his life, he lived with foster parents or relatives but not with his birth parents. His father was wild and mainly unemployed, and his mother was in a sanitarium having suffered a mental breakdown after having three children in four years, and weighing only eighty pounds on a five-one frame.

Dirk lived with his great aunt and great uncle during part of this period, and found himself with many of his cousins, as several of the parents of these children were in various states of divorce, separation or family abandonment.

His great aunt owned and ran a tenement house with ample space for all these relatives, but not sufficient energy for the parenting. His great uncle ran a successful commercial roofing business.

The aunt had a special affection for Dirk as she had also reared his father, who was left parentless when his mother died in childbirth and his father took off never to be seen again. She could see Dirk was a child who preferred to be alone finding no reason to force him to play with the other children.

Not only was he a loner, but once he started to school he refused to talk. The nuns designated him as slow and put him in the slow section of the class. He found this strange as he identified with the more alert students, and loved listening to them recite in class. He loved school. He found it safe, secure, orderly, and controlled. It had structure something he had not experienced before.

Written work delighted him but he still refused to participate in class. Was this shyness? Could it be insecurity? Did he fear being embarrassed? That is what the nuns concluded, so they left him alone.

* * *

Years later, looking back, Dirk decided it wasn’t any of these things. He had a hunger to learn and felt no advantage when he was talking. Even in that tenement house he would watch the other children, study the way they behaved and marvel at some of the things they would do and say, but he had no desire to join them in the doing.

A big child for his age, he was always thought to be older than he was as he was taller and huskier than most others of his generation being six foot by the age of fourteen and still growing despite having a mother of five-one and a father of five-seven. When you are tall as a boy, people tend to think you are more mature than you are. He suffered for that perception, as he was quite immature.

Perhaps Dirk's greatest blessing was that his great aunt and mother never attempted to change him but accepted him as he was. The result was that he changed as his interior dial or center developed, which would become the key to his idiosyncrtic character.

* * *

Dirk never became competitive, never cared to be anyone else, never looked for a hero with whom to identify, and for this skewed orientation away from the norm he became an unusually strong personality, a conundrum and frustration to many.

The good nuns taught him he was not on earth to punish other with his talents or bother them with his problems, but to develop his talents and use them to the benefit of others. It was their job as educators to identify these talents, give them life and expression, and define their usefulness.

Nuns, he discovered, were not without venial subjectivity.

Dirk might receive the highest grade on a test, but was apt to hear, “Nice job, Seamus,“ as the nuns (and his mother) preferred his given name, "but what a surprise!" Even his most supportive nun, his eighth grade teacher, who applauded his skills as a basketball player and budding scholar of Catholic doctrine, drew the line when it came to special competitions.

The sixth, seventh and eighth grade students participated in a spelling bee elimination competition to see who would represent the school in the County Spelling Bee Contest. Dirk won the competition. Expected to win was John, a genuine prodigy, a gifted student, and a classical pianist of the first rank.

Dirk's teacher and the school principal took Dirk aside and sat him down and said, “You won the contest, Seamus, but we think we will have a better chance of winning the county contest if John represents the school.”

A puzzled expression crossed Dirk’s face as he attempted to process this information. “Stir, I don’t understand. I thought I won the contest?”

“Well, let us put it this way,” his teacher told him, “it seems all the easy words came your way, and all the hard words came to John.”

Anger welled up in him; anger was a dominant humor to his personality. He wanted to say, but Sister, I knew all the words, every one of them. He didn’t say anything out of respect for this special nun whom he loved.

He was discovering that he had a good memory; that he could see in his mind a page reference in a book, or find a quote without much trouble.

It was a gift his mother had, but a talent that had gotten him into trouble when he was at university. Professors thought he was cheating when clearly he was not. It wasn’t confined to printed words. He could remember lectures nearly verbatim, and what people had said months ago, but now denied. It amazed him how often people lied, how easily they would forget what they had said before, as if they had never said it.

* * *

Disconcerted by the nuns' put down, but also relieved, he now recalled what his mother had said: “You are high strung, Seamus. You don’t handle stress well. You must be better prepared than anyone else because if you’re not the floodgates will open and all hell will break lose reducing you to a blabbering idiot.”

This proved true years later in an organic chemistry test at university. Dirk went into the test with an “A” average, looked at the test, and panicked, getting a 52 percent on an “F.” He was shocked and dismayed but had the temerity to visit his professor. “I think I lost it,” he confessed.

“Yes, I think you did,” his professor agreed, taking out his grade book. “Your lowest grade before was a 92, and a 52 on this test. What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re here to see what we can do about it, is that right?”

Dirk remained silent.

“Well, sir,” the professor continued, “I’ll put it this way. You no longer have an ‘A’ average, which is 90 percent, averaging this grade into your previous tests, but you’re close. That said if you average 90 percent or more on the rest of your tests this semester I’ll omit this grade from your average, fair enough?”

That surprising concession added motivation. The next test was quite different than any of the previous tests. There were only three problems, but the problems involved equations that took up more than a page each with the requirement of not only the correct sequence of reactions but also the suitable catalysts to produce the ultimate product in the end.

It was a conceptual framework rather than a regurgitation of formulae as had been the case before. A light went on in Dirk’s head from the beginning with him breezing through the test to finish before anyone else. He got a 100 percent with the next closest score 72 percent and the class average 39 percent.

He made an appointment to see the professor trying to understand the departure from the professor's previous format.

“I gave that type of test,” he conceded, “because I could see where you panicked. Then I wondered if my students were getting a grasp of organic chemistry as it applied to the real world of industry. Your performance on the previous test suggested I had my work cut out for me. How do you explain your turnaround?”

“I studied especially hard.”

“No, I don’t think that’s the reason.”

“Then I don’t know.”

“There is a lot to remember in an organic chemistry course and both the professor and student have only limited time. Straight memory was difficult for me as a student. I think it is for you as well.” Dirk nodded but had no idea where this was going.

“That is because we have to see the relationship of the equations to the process. We find with straight memory it is difficult to recall the connection of isolated equations, am I right?” Dirk nodded again out of politeness, but not conviction. Sensing this, the professor added, “There is something I want you to take forward in your life.”

“What is that?”

“Conceptual thinking is the building blocks to understanding of anything, and fundamental to thinking in chemistry." He laughed. "A long time ago when I was a student a professor had this kind of discussion with me. It made sense to me then. I hope it makes sense to you now. It is probably why you have a good memory."


Surprise cross Dirk's face. "You showed off some on this test." This caused Dirk to squirm. "I'm speaking of the listing of alternative catalysts and their concomitant diversions from the desired product. That little conceit reflected your exhilaration, as if to say, 'I get it!' I smiled when I saw it."

The professor continued. "The test you failed didn't show this premise." He studied Dirk. "Why do you think that test threw you off? Do you know?”

“I think so.”

“Do you want to share that with me?”

“Not really. It’s so stupid. When I get upset my mind seems to leave me. If you want to know the truth, I was surprised with my 52 because I finished the test in a fog. I thought I had gotten a zero.”

* * *

Dirk thanked his professor and then went back to his dormitory room. He sat there and thought about what the professor had said. He wondered if it were true. Then he remembered something that had happened in high school.

In a class in advanced mathematics covering analytical and solid geometry and spherical trigonometry, his math teacher, whom he thought was the best teacher he ever had, gave the class a national test at midterm of the first semester of that year. His teacher had such a gift at explaining mathematical concepts that Dirk looked forward to each session.

When the results came back, the math teacher congratulated the students on how well they had done finding the majority in the class of only twelve students far exceeded the national average. Dirk, however, did poorly on the test, and was thoroughly flummoxed.

He went to see his math teacher who assured him that the test would not be averaged into his grade. “I wanted to see how we stacked up with advanced students across the country,” the math teacher said, “and I was generally pleased with the results.” This burned into Dirk’s psyche as if he were branded, which he thought he had been.

“What happened, Dirk?”

“The only thing I can say is that I was premed for the test but after I got to the third or fourth problem my mind went blank. I didn’t even finished.”

“I noticed that.” Dirk just sat there still as a mouse. “Don’t worry about it.”

As he left the room, he repeated to himself, don’t worry about it! Easy for him to say. He couldn't wait for football practice where he could hit somebody. He wondered, am I a learner or a knower, a pretender or for real? I thought I was learning mathematics. Was I kidding myself?

* * *

Towards the end of that year Dirk’s math class had another national test. Dirk finished in the 97 percentile, tied with the highest score in the class. He felt good about himself and shared it with his best friend who was also in the class.

His friend said, “You should have done well.”

“Why?”

“It was the same test we took last semester.”

“It was?”

“You didn’t recognize it?”

“No.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I mean it. I didn’t recognize the test.”

“Okay, okay.”

* * *

Dirk went back to his math teacher who was beaming as he approached. “How do you feel about yourself now?”

Incredulously, Dirk said, “Did you give us the same test again?”

“As a matter-of-fact, I did.”

“Why?”

“Well, I could say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I did it because I wanted to see what you would do with a second chance.”

“You did it for me?”

“No, not only for you, but you have done the best of the lot. You set the curve, young man. What did you learn from this?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, I've had you as a student for two years. I think it tells us something about you.”

“What is that?”

“You’re extremely intense, extremely serious. I’ve never once seen you relaxed or joking around in or out of class. I know you’re an athlete. I also know you hate that tag.”

“How do you know that?”

“Believe me it shows. You want others to respect you not only for playing with some kind of a ball but as a student, as a scholar.”

“That shows, too?”

“Oh, yes. You want to be taken seriously and have strong opinions. This can be frightening to some. They see your strenghts and not your weaknesses, making matters worse, they exaggerate your strengths.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, I imagine it’s a matter of power. You’re a tall good-looking boy, a good athlete, active in extra curricular activities, honor student, and seem to have everything. Others notice that. It can be quite intimidating creating envy, jealousy and even fear. When people fear you, watch out.”

“But why? I don't see myself that way.”

“Because they don’t see the weaknesses in you that I do, because they only see your strengths and your advantages.”

“Well, I don’t plan on changing.”

“That is obvious, but because of this and your intensity I’m afraid you’re going to walk into walls. Most of us compare and compete with others, and you simply won’t, worse yet, you won’t apologize for not. It makes you look arrogant as well as confident.”

“But I’m not that confident, and I don't see myself as arrogant.”

“Others would differ with you on that. They take a bead on others as to how they measure up, but you don't. You only compete with yourself. You demonstrated that last fall after doing poorly on the national test. You were the only one that came to me for an explanation, not in false humility, but to find out what was wrong and to correct it. Some others did poorly. Not one of them had the contretemps to come and discuss the problem with me, but you did. You are your own laboratory. That is unique.”

“But is it right?”

“It is not a question of being right or not, but it’s you.”

“What advice do you give me?”

“I’m not like you, Dirk, but I do admire your integrity. I will tell you this despite the difficulties I think you will encounter, go for it! We need more people like you and less people like the rest of us. You’re the genuine article. I suspect that will be your cross as well as your blessing.”

“Because I’m not going to change, is that it?”

Dirk’s math teacher didn’t answer. He put his papers in his briefcase signaling the session was over.

* * *
A person has the life that he has mainly because of his mentors along the way. These people introduce him to him or herself. They are especially effective when they don’t try to change the individual but attempt instead to identify the person to his or her uniqueness and then to harness it in some way.

There are also people in positions of authority because of their own failures or stymied careers that might attempt to suppress this uniqueness, and so the person must be always alert to such possibility. By a peculiar accident of being, we are likely to only appreciate our true gifts when pointed out to us by others. How sad it is when this never happens.

Remember this. If the central thrust of your life is feeding off the accomplishments of others, you will never be better than a poor imitation of them. Psychiatrists Willard and Marguerite Beecher state it this way in “Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity” (1966):

“Competition enslaves and degrades the mind. It is on of the most prevalent and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who is devoid of originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!” (p. 56)

On the other hand, if someone recognizes your uniqueness, or you help someone else recognize their uniqueness and you breathe life into that uniqueness, you will climb with them to unimagined heights. We are teachers as well as students, and always students in our quest for self-realization.

The air is not rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual at such a height separated from the squalor below. But rather, it is a vantage point to see more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something about it.

Whatever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you’re talking to me, please look me in the eye. Don’t mount a ladder and peer down on me as if I were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don’t wear your kudos or awards like medals on your person, but let me sense your essence from the insight I gain from my connection with you.

* * *

The greatest reward in life is to help others help themselves, to help them to realize and harness their unique gifts. It is the purpose of these missives on this website (www.fisherofideas.com) to encourage that process.

In no way is this an attempt to have others follow in my footsteps. That said the greatest opportunity to self-realization is to compare and compete only with oneself irrespective of anyone else. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty in this regard is temptation to measure oneself in terms of others and what others have accomplished. This is a predictor of remorse and self-defeat as the irony of life is you can never be better than a poor imitation of someone else no matter what you have achieved as measured by what they have realized.

Your lot in life is to find out what makes you tick, what gets you to rise off your bottom and to do something, to be someone, to have some purpose, to effectively utilize your inherent ability.

* * *

One reason we don’t know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic. What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of adults, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. Even a child can sense he or she is a burden. The most affluent society on earth has left its children largely in the lurch. Added to this complexity is that most parents have failed to cross that mantle into mature adulthood. My sense is that children, despite the statistics to the contrary, are not victims of raging autism but rather lifestyle diseases of their parents.

Given this predicament, many dysfunctional marriages have children to hold the marriage together, and implode the marriage instead. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease with such an intervention. In a compare and compete society, the most important job of breadwinners is believed to be that of making a good living with it assumed that nurturing of children is a given and will materialize as if by osmosis in the lap of affluence. Not so. When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to suffer, and it is usually time and attention to the needs of the children.

Adding to this turmoil is that of a marriage where one parent compares and competes with the other parent, finding ways to nullify his or her gain or advantage, even sabotaging the mate’s effort to the confusion of the children who are witness to the drama. The obstacles to self-realization are these and every reader knows someone engaged with them at the moment. I hope it is not the reader.

* * *

CIGARETTES & ADDICTIONS (A STORY)

CIGARETTES & ADDICTION (A STORY)

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 21, 2009

The accepted reason cigarettes are addictive is their nicotine content. There is truth to this. The discussion is always about the content of cigarettes never the subtext of smoking. This is a story of subtext.

Many years ago, making one of my late evening chemical engineering service calls on an obliging industrial plant that allowed me to do so, I ran into another chemical engineer who was also making a service call.

He was a chain smoker. I noticed this as he went about reading graphs with a clipboard in his hand, but always with a lighted cigarette bouncing between his lips as he studied the glassed in charts through a haze of cigarette smoke.

This was even more pronounced when we were rapping up our work for the night, which was now past midnight. As I was putting my laboratory equipment back into my cases and he was rapping up his gear, we talked. We were both exhausted. It had been a long day and we enjoyed the break before collapsing into our automobiles and moving on. He lit a cigarette on the end of a cigarette already half smoked as we sat down on a bench and sunk into our fatigue. I offered him some coffee from my thermos. He waved it off with his torch, while I gulped a cup down.

“You smoke a lot," I said.

He smiled, “You noticed. Why, does it bother you?”

“No,” I lied, then adding, “How much do you smoke?”

“At least four packs a day.”

“Wow!” I said, “It’s probably a stupid question but why do you smoke so much?

I looked at him. He was about my age, but with sallow skin, sunken cheekbones, laughing lines around his eyes and mouth, and budding bags under his eyes, probably from lack of sleep. He also had thick black curly hair that was well groomed, as were his hands, and nails, and he didn’t dress cheap. By his easy style and demeanor, I imagined he never met a stranger.

“No, it’s not a stupid question. I travel the country and this is our biggest customer. I try to call on as many clients as I can every day. My income is based on the coverage. So, I’m kind of time sensitive if you know what I mean.” He gave me a nervous chuckle. “I’m married to these machines and instruments.” He laughed again. “The only company I have other than the noise of the machines and the squiggly lines on the graphs is my cigarette. It’s good company fills my loneliness and has for years.”

“How old were you when you started smoking?”

“Oh, I expect twelve or thirteen.”

“And you’ve smoked ever since?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Have you had any illness related to smoking?”

“No, I’m as fit as a dime.”

“That’s wonderful. You’re also as thin as one, too.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been able to put on much weight.”

“You’re, what, a couple inches shorter than I am? What do you weigh?”

“I suspect so. I’m six-one and weigh 145 dripping wet.”

“That’s pretty thin.”

“What are you?”

“Oh, about six-four and 195.”

“You’ve got me by 50 pounds.”

“Yes.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Never tried it.”

“Good for you.” Then he looked me in the eye. “How do you deal with loneliness on the road?”

“You may find this hard to believe but I cherish being alone.”

“How come?”

“It gives me a chance to think.”

“What do you do when you get down?”

“I don’t get down too often but when I do I suppose I read a book. I’m never without a book always reading something if that answers your question.”

“That’s your cigarette.”

“You think?”

“Oh, yeah. You read. I smoke. How many books do you read?”

“Oh, goodness, besides those relating to my work?”

”Yeah.”

“I suppose one or two a week sometimes more sometimes less.”

“There you have it. That’s your addiction.” He nimbly tapped the last cigarette out of a pack, squashed the empty in his hand, and threw it into the trashcan. “What do you read?”

“It depends. I go in periods reading only histories than mysteries than the classics. Whenever I take a break on the road, I’m likely to find myself in some bookstore.”

“Classics? You mean the kind we were force to read in school?”

“Yes.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, Dostoyesvky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Stendhal, Hugo, Camus, Sartre, Lawrence, Joyce, then of course Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Farrell, Dos Passos, Maddox Ford, Faulkner, Lewis, Eliot, Austen and the Bronte sisters, stuff like that.”

“That’s heavy stuff. Read any dirty books?”

“Some would say ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ by Lawrence and “Ulysses’ by Joyce qualifies if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I mean really raunchy books like ‘Fanny Hill’ by John Cleland and ‘My Life and Loves’ by Frank Harris.” He looked at me. “You don’t know those authors do you?” I shook my head. He smiled. “Those will get your attention I guarantee.” He flipped ash on the floor. “You sound like a writer.”

“I’m not but I think I’d like to be one.”

“Why don’t you write a book?”

“I don’t think I have the talent. I know I don’t have the time.”

“I’ve noticed you’re always jotting into a notebook.”

“Oh, that’s my work.”

“How many notebooks do you fill?"

“At least one a week, I write down about everything that comes to mind, especially after sales calls.” A little pain came into my eyes. “No matter how bad it goes.” Then I added, “It’s surprising what an insight can register with something written down to reflect on later. Certain things stand out that you might not have noticed. It’s a gauge to go forward.”

“That’s good. I like that. Who taught you that?”

“Well, it might be back to your point about addiction. Besides always reading, I’m inclined to write when I find myself pressing. I can sit in a restaurant and lose myself writing in my notebook. I forget the time just writing away.”

“Yeah? They ever kick you out for just sitting there writing?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How do you deal with that?”

“I just go on to the next place.”

“So you see you’re as much addicted in your way as I am in my way, don’t you agree?”

“I don’t consider myself addicted.”

“Well, I certainly see that you are.”

“Em.”

“How would you describe yourself?”

“Disciplined!”

“That’s a good word. Do you think it covers the issue?”

“Probably not. But back to you, do you think good company covers your cigarette?”

“I get your point, but hey, it works for me.”

“Yes, I can see that and I think mine works for me as well.”

“Next thing you’re going to tell me you don’t drink.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve never had the inclination.”

“You’ve never tasted booze? Come on!”

“Yes, I have.”

“And?”

“It gives me a headache. I suffer from migraines as it is and don’t need an assist from booze.”

“Em, that’s interesting. Booze gives me a buzz. It’s also a pick me up. There’s nothing better when you’re dead on your feet to go into a bar order a shot of whiskey and a cold beer down them smoke a couple of cigarettes and find yourself in another country.” He laughed. “The problem is stopping there.”

“Can you?”

“Most of the time, but not always.”

“Most of the time?”

“Absolutely! You’re not going to believe this but I love my work. I love chemical engineering. I also took a degree in mechanical engineering if you can believe that.”

“I can believe it. Where?”

“Purdue. How about you?”

“Iowa.”

“Yeah, I had a double major, took me more than seven years to get them but they’ve come in handy in my work.”

“So, you’re some kind of a scientist.”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. I’m a good problem solver of automated systems and let’s leave it at that. I can read systems like you probably read books. You’re smiling, why you smiling?”

“Just a private joke.” How could I tell him I read people like an open book without offending him?

“Anyway, if God said to me, ‘Nathan, I want you to be an engineer,’ I must have heard it in my mother’s womb because I’ve always been a tinkerer since a boy. That’s about it. You get too good and they push you up into management. I’d never allowed that, see, they’ve already tried. They flattered me with this management rant to make me as stupid as the people I report to. I told them ‘no thanks.’ Keep me where I am but give me more money. They said they couldn't do that because I’m already at the top of my bracket whatever that means. Can you believe that?”

“Yes I can.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Well, not really."

"But is that when you have a few more shots and beers?”

“It might be, but I don’t need an excuse if I’m being honest. It’s part of my modus operandi. You see they don’t know it but I do. I have the best of all possible worlds. I travel the country live pretty much on my expense account and touch little of my salary. I fly and drive at the company’s expense to beautiful places. I don’t have a wife or kids to support. Hey, I don’t have any life other than work. And I love it.”

“But what if you had another friend besides the cigarette, what then?”

“I don’t think that way. Oh, I have girlfriends. Got them all over the country. Let me ask you a question: who would want to be married to a guy who is never home? As it stands now none of my girlfriends trust me.”

“Should they?”

“That’s not the point. The point is I’ve never made any of their lives more miserable for being married to me.”

“How do they feel about it?”

“They get over it.”

“Does it bother you if they have other boyfriends?”

“Hey, I encourage it. I shouldn’t tell you this but many of them have married and when I’m in town they want to see me.”

“Do you see them?”

“Now that would be telling.”

“Okay.”

He looked at me keenly blowing out a perfect smoke ring. “You may not remember me but I’ve seen you on several sites late at night like this. You sell as well as service, right?” I nodded. “So you sell chemical systems to engineers during the day?” I nodded again. “Do many people like you work late at night?”

“Well, there are 250 people like me in my division and I seriously doubt if many of them do.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Probably a lot of the same reasons you do. I like the quiet. It gives me most of the day to make sales calls rather than service calls. Service calls take up a lot of time if you do them right just as your service calls do. My sales calls are with plant managers, plant and chief engineers who are on duty during the day. I can do my service calls better in the quiet than during the day. Also, like you, I like this work because of the freedom, the independence, being my own boss to make decisions in my own way, and not have someone looking over my shoulder. My performance appraisal is satisfied customers and acquiring new business. I’m outside all the bureaucratic nonsense the same as you are, if that answers your question.”

“How about your boss?”

I laughed. “How about him! He calls every single night and when he can’t get me he waxes like a rejected Buddha. I don’t know if he doesn’t believe I’m making these late night service calls or he thinks I out doing something problematic. But that ‘s his problem.”

“What’s it like when you connect?”

“Funny you ask. There is a lot of silence. He’ll ask me how things are going. I’ll tell him and then for thirty seconds or more there is silence. I’ll ask if he’s still there and he’ll say he is. It’s maddening. Then he’ll ask me something else followed by the silence.”

“He’s checking up on you.”

“No doubt.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Let me ask you, how would you feel?”

“Boy, I’m glad I don’t have that kind of boss. Besides, the long distant calls would be out of sight and the company’s constantly in money pinching programs.”

“What’s your expense account like with you traveling so much?”

“Pretty open.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Why?”

“From what you’ve said you living off your expenses.”

“How about you?”

“It’s surprising when you don’t drink don’t smoke don’t watch TV and stay in the most inexpensive motels there are you can eat in the best restaurants in your territory and still have the most modest expense account of anyone.”

“You like that?”

“I like that.”

“How do your colleagues feel about it?” A smile creased my lips. “You don’t give a crap do you?”

“That’s a poetic way of putting it.”

“We’re not team players are we?”

“No, I don’t think that fits our description.”

“But we’re team leaders.”

“No, I don’t think that fits either. I think we’re team partners with our customers. We’ve gotten beyond company personnel chatter if you like.”

Have you heard the 80-20 Pareto theory?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think we’re the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.”

“If you like.”

“Well, let me ask you. You’re a salesman as well as an engineer. You have to sell as well as service, right?”

“Yes.”

“How do you stack up to others in selling?”

“I dwarf them. Are you surprised?”

“No. You know you’re going to be pushed into management.”

“I suspect I will.”

“Do you want that to happen?”

“I have a wife and four little kids.”

“You have four kids? How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“My company has the same problem as yours. I don’t think they’ll allow me to make more than my boss or my boss’s boss.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, they’ve changed my rate of commission to sales twice already.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It bothers me mightily. As matters now stand, I intend to work until I’m forty and then retire and write.”

“Now, that I would call a dream.”

“Yes. Yes, it’s a dream.”

“Why don’t you join another company?”

“That’s a possibility. If they cut the rate of my commissions one more time, I’ll resign. Then they'll have one of two options.”

“Which are?”

“Bump me up to management equivalent to my income or let me go. If they let me go, 90 percent of the new business of this region's sales I customarily generate will go. And I suspect turnover of my accounts will increase as well.”

“Meaning competitors will step in and take your accounts.”

“Meaning that is a possibility.”

“So what do you think will happen?”

“They’ll do what spineless corporations always do. They’ll push me upstairs.”

The smoker laughed taking a long drag on his cigarette and studied me through the haze as if seeing me for the first time. “If I were to judge you on the way you look, I’d say you were an easy mark with that open honest face that look of innocence.”

“It works in sales.”

“I’m sure it does, but I wonder if they see the steel in your eyes that I see now. There is something of the cynical bastard in you isn’t there?” He studied me some more. “I’ll bet once you land an account they’re not likely to quit you.”

“No, not likely.”

“So, you wear a mask?”

“Don’t we all?”

“Point taken.”

* * *

The rest of the story is that I was pushed up to corporate management, then retired at age thirty-six, read and wrote for two years on a self-imposed sabbatical, published a book, then went back to school for six years to earn a Ph.D., and then set out with a new set of addictions.

* * *

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT --- YET ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT --- YET ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 17, 2009

* * *

A PROFESSOR WRITES:

Jim,

You are clearly speaking to a larger audience than I am as a professor. In doing so, you bring hope to me and I am sure to many others.

As I was born at the end of World War II, 1945 to be precise, I feel little kinship with the baby boomer generation. My pride is with that Greatest Generation that preceded mine.

In every generation, there is a mix of everything obviously and my confidence in this current generation is very high, not because they are so very special now but because the challenges they face will make them become very special.

Our last Great Generation had to sacrifice much for the common good; now the same challenge has been presented again at a time when society is being pushed hard to show its stuff.

Today external economic forces plus internal corrupt practices, forces that have always been with us, are pushing it. They are being challenged like we were to grow up and use their God given gifts of intellect and drive to develop our species to a higher state of being.

So, why should this path be an easy one, why should there not be differences emerging that must be dealt with, and why would they not care about leaving a better country for their children than the one that was passed to us?

As in all systems, and particularly it seems in political ones, there is a lot of noise. Also some fury and yes I agree many, many sounds that just seem bizarre, and if we move to judgment, not at all mature or demonstrating any evidence of much thinking.

But the sounds are necessary, and again from a systems perspective, we must have what I am sure you know, "requisite variety.” Our diversity is in so many ways our deepest strength.

You won’t find this in China but you will see it in India. That country "practices" democracy. India makes many of the same mistakes we make.

I have much confidence in democracy. It is a guiding principle that has a way of helping us to develop our ability to grow up and play the role of adults. For the first time in human history much of the world has this same dream of freedom. They also want a form of capitalism that makes their material lives richer as well. However, we should never assume we are a democracy, but should instead recognize that we are trying to learn how to be democratic.

Yes, it is doubtful if some adults are doing much thinking beyond the level of fear-induced frustration. Their angst is that they are not getting their way on everything. As a consequence, some of their actions appear uncivil and disrespectful. To create a truly participative version of democracy it will inevitably necessitate a lot of sound and fury.

Since my research over the last 40 years has always been concerned with how we can create and maintain democratic organizations, I am keenly aware of all of our failures. Yet I am very optimistic. I have a simple symbol to reflect my hope for the future. It is SOS. That hope is based on SELF ORGANIZING SYSTEMS. This has yet to be fully understood or developed as potential solutions to the many problems holding us back. Each day more can be learned about how to tap our ability to self-organize. It is this quest in practice and theory that keeps me energized.

In times of trouble, clearly an SOS is not a bad call. Yes, we do need help but we ironically are the help we need.

So how do we help to learn what can work better and help develop us as people who still have a role in this amazing world we live in?

Just as the Greatest Generation you represent gave us much to learn, the present generation will be the one that changes the world, and shows us how to use our strengths and intellect to create a more participative and less hierarchical system. It will work to create a more sustainable economy with greater transparency and justice for a larger proportion of the world's population.

If we could ever have one more "I have a dream speech" it would be the one that again points out those universal human goals but this time we have the capacity to create the actions before the speech.

It will not be easy but that is how a generation lays claim to the honor of being the “Greatest Generation.” Keep the faith. One short human life is hardly the scale needed to judge how human progress is made. Never forget that we have been far worse off. The images of the future created in the midst of WWI were dismal and bleak but look around and see what in less than 100 years we have achieved.

Ken

* * *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Ken,

Thank you for taking the time to express your thoughts on this subject. Self-organizing systems, incidentally, are in sync with Edward de Bono's "lateral and parallel" thinking. They dovetail with my insistence that we need an internal governor and moral compass in order to be in control and make appropriate decisions.

In a 1996 book (The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend), I wrote: “We are not happy campers. We have lost our moral compass and our way.” Nearly a decade and a half later, I see little evidence to revise this assessment.

I am much more of a skeptic than you are, bridging on the cynical, but of course you know that. Some of my essays now in the hopper will no doubt illustrate this with some acridity.

You flatter me as being part of the "Greatest Generation.” Despite all the hype of Tom Brokaw’s book of the same title, this generation had no choice but to go to war. I was not yet a teenager at war’s end, but my uncles were in that war with one on Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed the islands on December 7, 1941. He survived with a broken back.

His brother operated an LST (Landing Ship Tank) carrying troops ashore in the invasions of North Africa, D-Day Invasion, and the invasion of Sicily, and of Italy at Salerno. He, too, survived but saw a lot of carnage.

I collected his letters and edited them into a book for his family of those adventures. What came through in his correspondence and diaries was a teenage kid too naive to be scared and who enlisted simply to be with his buddies, several of whom didn't survive the war.

There is a difference between then and now that I sense is gone forever.

It is an innocence and paradoxically an implicit confidence that everything will turn out all right in the end. That was then. Now, everything is an act, a dramaturgic play, and a product of subliminal stimuli on television, radio, the Internet, and in film with the constant cacophony of impulse stimulus-response to create synthetic behavior. My wonder is if anyone born after 1965 has a working center.

My reason for saying that is that I am thinking of my two cousins here, good boys who wouldn't have recognized a vice if it walked up and attempted to seduce them, strong boys, athletic and fun loving, disciplined boys, who feared their parents, the police, the government and took the Red, White and Blue for granted. They were Iowa boys used to hard work and few kudos. They were programmed to get passing grades, stay in school, get a job, marry, have kids, and stay in place. Instead, only eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, they found themselves in the navy fighting a war. They were willing to die for their country not knowing quite sure what Nazism and Communism was all about, but trusted those in charge did, people who they referred to as “solid,” an expression of the day, and worthy of the sacrifice.

The Greatest Generation was naive. All the generations that have followed have been increasingly sophisticated, political, amoral, self-serving and belligerent. A more appropriate caption for my cousins’ generation would be “The Last Generation” of regional and collective solidarity, which was committed to a sacrosanct and national American Culture. That is all gone.

We now live in a fragmented and fractured universe and all the optimism in the world is unlikely to put the pieces back together. That said if there are ten million like you in a world of six and one half billion souls even the miraculous is possible. No one can fault your great heart.

Be always well,

Jim.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT -- ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT – ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 16, 2009

* * *

AN OD PSYCHOLOGIST RESPONSE FROM CARL SANDBURG’S CITY OF THE BIG SHOULDERS, CHICAGO!

Hello Jim,

Yes, we have problems. But, they are good problems. They come as the result of free speech. The civility cat is out of the bag, never to be caught again.

There is too much gloom and doom among our senior citizens. I'm on the edge of that myself. Lately, I have been gaining optimism for the direction we're moving. I recall my youthful days raging against the machine about wrongs in civil rights, an immoral war waged to promote capitalism, a counterculture run wild with free sex and drugs and the ambiguity of personal immorality with socio-political idealism.

Sure today's youth are wrapped up in their electronic devices, but those devices do not seed polarity, they just facilitate it. Polarity was sown in the Sixties and Seventies. Everyone who took the so called "right path" now realize it didn't get them any further ahead, by their measure, than those who took the "activist path" forsaking real jobs for social change. I assume there is a tinge of bitterness in the anger displayed by those who say the world is falling apart.

When I think of the social angst that existed 40 years ago - dramatic technological advances, black-white conflict, assassinations, a President elected in a landslide then refusing to run for a second term, the Viet Nam War, a President and Vice President resigning in disgrace, college campus unrest - and we whine today because our economy is suffering from gas. The Feds apply a couple of $700 billion bicarbonates we belch and move on. This is a great time. We haven't had a reordering of this magnitude for decades.

We should engage and revel in it, rather than complaining every step of the way.

I hear complaints about the education level of today's youth. Honestly, I am not too impressed with the education level of my peers. I see thousand of seniors march on Washington, Medicare cards in hand, to complain about government involvement in health care. When confronted by an interviewer with a microphone and asked their opinion of "Obamacare" all they could utter were one-word answers. "Ridiculous." "Expensive." And my favorite, "Socialism."

I appreciate that you continually remind us of the past. The lessons and models great leaders have left us should be the touchstone for our decisions as we move ahead. Those wise people wrote much more and gave us insight to the why of their actions.

Just as my example above, sound bites misrepresent the intent and meaning that drives people to act in support or protest. Absent awareness of that deeper force, we are left to interpret things. Our interpretations, then, come from our own personal context and bias. That person's old. That person is Black, Hispanic, Eastern European or Asian. This is what they mean when they say....

We create the lack of civility in our own minds. We react and sustain the bias-fed distrust. Simon and Garfunkel had it right forty years ago.

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening....
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

Only, the words of the prophet are no longer written on subway walls and tenement halls but on Twitter.

Stay in the light,

Michael

* * *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS

I am a generation older than you yet your values resonate with me in substantive ways. I mention this not because it is important for your values to be congruent with mine, but to show that the clash of values has been a progressive and consequential one.

You were born after the Great War and are a member of the “Baby Boom” generation, but obviously of parents that believed in fundamental civility, decency and respect for all law abiding Americans. I come from similar parents but a most discerning mother.

My mother was never comfortable with the interment camps during that Great War, which found Japanese Americans, people born in this country, raised and educated in this country but forced to give up their professions, careers, homes, their freedom and privacy to spend the duration of the war in these camps. She shuttered to think if we had been born Japanese American.

Three things were quite apparent to me as I was grown up and only a boy during this Great War:

(1) The patriotism and communal sacrifice from the richest to the poorest in support of the common good during the Great War was everywhere apparent;

(2) The new found role of women in jobs previously the exclusive domain of men in all phases of life, but in particular in industry and manufacturing proved women were not the weaker sex;

(3) The repressed hatred and vilification of the peoples of Japan, Germany and Italy that was seeded by American propaganda during the Great War took on new forms and resembled a toxic virus that once born had no apparent antidote.

* * *

I wrote about these effects IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003) from the perspective of an eight to twelve-year-old boy. Now, in my seventies, I see how they have seeded so many false steps in our Republic, and are coming home to roost now, crippling any effort to resolve our problems, which are many.

Since I’ve written widely on these subjects, I will mention them only in capsular comments now.

POINT ONE

Being victorious in World War Two against a world decimated by the war, America had an advantage seldom known by a single nation before – the sky became the limit.

All the selfless sacrifice, all the pulling together for the common good suddenly was put aside. The standard of living of most Americans shot to the sky. Executives of industry who had done so much with so little during the war now built empires of people doing little but making loads of money. There was no restrain.

The 1950s found ordinary sorts from families that had few high school graduates, such as my own, going to college, landing big jobs and having splendid careers without much competition because we were born during the Great Depression when the birthrate was one of the lowest in American history.

CEO Charles Wilson of General Motors in 1953 had the hubris to declare, “As GM goes so goes America!” No one disputed his words.

Meanwhile, Japan, Inc. was about to eat America’s lunch in the 1960s with the American quality technology of W. Edwards Deming, J. M. Juran and Peter Drucker.

American jobs and markets shrunk in the 1960s and 1970s with NBCTV calling attention to this fact in its 1980 program with the cry, “Japan Can Why Can’t We?” To this day we haven’t come up with the answer.

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POINT TWO

American women didn’t get the vote until the nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, but came into their own during the Great War. They still lag in pay and promotion in most jobs, but are the majority of college students in American colleges and universities, and dominate the schools of medicine and education, among others.

There are more women engineers, mathematicians, chemists and physicists today because women do not shy away from tough disciplines, while more and more men go the MBA route to money and greed.

The breakthrough was World War Two when women proved they could do anything men could do and probably better. The fact that this has taken so long surprises me because I’ve found women far more able than I have found men, far more courageous and principled and able to take the heat when things go awry, and I’m speaking from experience not hypothetically.

What has saddened me is to see women when they rise to CEO status of large corporations putting aside the wide intelligence of their gender and attempt to be as resolute and amoral as men. Such women join the old boys’ club only as girls, and they invariably fail.

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POINT THREE

When I was a boy, I could not understand the signs on the sides of bakery trucks, “The Only Good Jap Is A Dead Jap.”

I’d ask my mother. She would say, her cigarette smoke rising to the ceiling, “I hope you never have to go to war, Jimmy, because war is about killing the enemy, and the only way a man can kill another man who has done him no harm is to dehumanize him.”

My face would screw up in incomprehension. She would see this and add, “We have to make a person a thing because the fear is no one in his right mind could kill a person who has done him no harm.”

The “Red Scare” and the House Un-American Activities Committee followed the war. Senator Joseph McCarthy led the hysteria seeing Communist in the State Department (Alger Hess) and everywhere, even in the US Army, and of course Hollywood with actors, writers and directors. It was a terrible time. I was in college and found there were books I wasn’t supposed to read because they were written by communist sympathizers. I read them anyway.

I’ve never been a joiner or a great one for college bull sessions, but when I couldn’t avoid one I found it remarkable how vehement and hateful some students could become. They found nothing peculiar with the McCarthyism, “Better dead than Red.” I found it scary.

These many years later I sense that fear is a many-sided trigger that a person with the most bizarre credentials can use and be believed as a sage instead of as a fool. I am thinking of the talk show host Rush Limbaugh who now seems to dominate a political ideology.

Brian Williams of NBCTV recently interviewed Former President Jimmy Carter. Carter stated that the current attacks on President Barak Obama are racist in nature, and that this racism is much wider and deeper than the president. The former president sees it as the surfacing of suppressed animosity for African Americans in general and the president in particular. White Americans, he claims, cannot see a black man as qualified for the highest office in the land. I pray he is wrong about most Americans, as President Barak Obama, if given a chance, may prove to be a great president.

That said the banter of one protester in Washington, D.C. proved especially offensive. It read, “Monkey see, monkey spend,” a clear reference to the president and his fiscal policies.

How could anyone conceive much less hold up such a sign is beyond me? It was hurtful to see that sign and it saddened me deeply. I was ashamed as an American for the rest of the world to see such a sign.

I am coming to understand now in my advanced years, much as I would prefer otherwise, how a Joseph Stalin or an Adolf Hitler could ever come to power. I must reread Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935), a novel about how totalitarianism took hold in the United States, a book I read as a boy.

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