Cold Shower 28: Making Peace with the World of Work

Cold Shower Making Peace with the Modern World of Work
Volume I, Article XXVIII

This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial psychologist and former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe Ltd. For the past 30 years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. Author of seven books and more than 300 published articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits and relation to power – for a changing work force in a changing work climate, he writes about interests of the modern worker. Dr. Fisher started out as a laborer in a chemical plant, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinational corporations. These columns are designed to provoke discussion.

Question:

Dr. Fisher, I look to books for easing my dilemma. Instead, they contribute to it. Books conquering complexity through leadership and new science only add to my confusion. I attended a lecture on world class and the new global economy, and felt as if in an alien world. Where do I fit in? My answer comes back, “Nowhere!” Am I the exception?

Dr. Fisher replies:

No. But give these writers credit for attempting to show the way. Writers write first to perceive their own dilemma, and hope to contribute to the resolution of yours.

This has led me to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction, as we commonly understand the distinction, but only narrative. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, ever since the arrival of Zoraster or Zarathrustra, as Nietzsche prefers, the world has bought into his perceived struggle between light and darkness, good and evil. This has given rise to the command to conquer rather than to live in harmony with nature.

Conquest has idealized “progress,” which has become Western society’s most important product. Moreover, the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam owe the Iranian prophet a great debt. Now why do I mention this?

First, we are all a product of at least a 3,000-year cumulative tradition. We accept this tradition, for the most part, as truth personified without review or reflection. Man decided then that the world was alien to him and must be conquered, and yet that world keeps besting us at every turn. Second, our religious tradition, which has been a refuge from confusion and a sanctuary for peace, has lost its way as well. Third, science has attempted to fill this spiritual void of subjective ends with material certitude of objective means with uneven outcomes.

It is no longer a question of how many angels are on the head of a pin but what is the ultimate subatomic entity upon which all life is based. Indeed, the focus has shifted in the last 300 years from religion to science, from a God-centered universe to a man-centered society, from language to semantics, from simplicity to complexity.

Now writers, who are as much immersed in this confusion as you are, attempt to deal with their isolation and confusion by splitting themselves in two: creator and documentarian, teller and listener, penetrator and explainer (of complexity), conspiring to pass on the collective wisdom in its own language, disguised in its own enlightened bias, that of the factual world.

Ideally, the connection between writer and reader in this enterprise is to promote acceptance of what helps clarify confusion and rejection of what only adds to bewilderment. Writer and reader, it might be mentioned, are jointly stumbling in the dark, knowing that they have limited vision and limited access to truth.

With this in mind, I propose these thoughts:

1) Truth depends on its usefulness in making sense of experience. Value what you observe; evaluate secondary and tertiary information in that light.
2) You are your own guide through complexity. Complexity is simplicity compounded to the point of obfuscation. You don’t have to buy into it.
3) Freedom is your inherent right. It gives you the opportunity to make choices. The problem with choices is they demand inner integrity and self-responsibility.
4) Comparing and competing can become quite bewildering, and the source of much wasted energy in imitation of others rather than in concentration on your own unique gifts and qualities.
5) If you fail to enter and leave the workplace with a comparable sense of zest and satisfaction, chances are you are in the wrong space. Life is too short to punish yourself with justification for an untenable situation. There is not enough pay or opportunity that justifies misery.
6) Equality and excellence are not mutually compatible. If the focus is totally on equality, excellence is its first casualty.
7) Use your powers to enlighten and enable others. The greatest gift life has given you is your mind, a mind that has symmetry, balance, harmony and confluence, a mind that has the capacity to see clearly through the veil of confusion, a mind that is free but can be easily enslaved if you are not watchful.
8) Trust is the critical component to enlightened development and social engagement. More work can be accomplished and more time spent in dealing with problems in an atmosphere of trust.

You may have felt confused and alien to what you heard at this lecture on world class and the new global economy because it did not fit neatly in with what you already knew. This is one of the deathtraps of the mind. The brain develops grooves of thought and is weary of anything that is not consistent with those grooves. That said, the human brain is capable of defining the problem, and determining its context rather than to be obsessed with its solution. In any event problems are controlled, not solved. As author William L. Livingston puts it,

Only the individual human brain, acting alone, solves problems. Problems are perceived and solutions are “hatched.” No two humans perceive the problem the same and no two humans will “hatch” the same solution (Friends in High Places, F.E.S. Ltd. Publishing, 1990, p. 96).

Copyright (1996) Look for Dr. Fisher’s new book, Near Journey’s End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-indulgent Man? The book will be out in 2005.