Writer's Responsibility to the Reader!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
"If the story is in you," William Faulkner once said, "it has got to come out." All writers, whether they are writing of a new scientific discovery, recording their musings, writing their memoirs, or publishing a novel are telling some kind of a story. That is what writing is all about.
Faulkner, incidentally, drifted a good deal before he finally settled down to writing, reinventing himself, attending college and then dropping out almost immediately, taking a sinecure position at the local post office in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, and then when the war came on (World War II), going to Canada, purchasing a Canadian flyer's outfit, returning to Oxford with a limp, as if he had been in the war, all inventions, all adding to his repertoire as a storyteller.
“The job of fiction,” writes Stephen King, “is to find the truth inside the story’s web of lies.” Read biographies of successful writers and you will see that lying is source material, and exaggeration a critical component of their tool kit.
Oscar Wilde once said that all storytellers are consummate liars, but added, there is more truth in their lies than in people who live on the surface of life and call it truth.
A writer, especially a writer of fiction, is basically telling the story of himself from as many possible angles as he can possibly conceive. Gore Vidal said that Henry James had several original stories in his repertoire, but most writers only have one or two, no matter how many books they write, with the possible exception of Shakespeare who had scores of original stories in his catalog.
Now, a writer can only make connection with a reader if the story he is telling resonates with the reader. Faulkner, who had very little formal education, but read widely, expected his readers to have a considerable vocabulary, and a healthy appreciation of fear and conflict in the human heart. This was the truth the reader had to bring to the story. Henry James said essentially the same thing when he said the purpose of a novel is to help the heart of man know itself.
Where does that put modern techno-thrillers and mystery novels of the macabre? One could say a safe distance from the wellspring of the immortal soul. These are not stories but essentially erector sets that fascinate in the complexity of their design. It hasn’t always been so.
Kurt Vonnegut said of Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road (1949), “His journals remind me of a time, not all that long ago, when there were still a few people passionately responsive to writing. They are now extinct.” He was talking about people who looked directly at their hidden demons and recorded the terror in their hearts without blinking.
Kerouac, if anything, obsessively embraced his fears, and left no room in the workshop of his heart for anything, but the old verities and truths, as Faulkner might put it.
Faulkner was dedicated to poetry and the human spirit, and spoke to this in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Sweden in 1950:
“Until he (the writer) does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope, and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.”
Joseph Campbell put this in terms of the “seven circles of charkas,” suggesting the “third level” or “solar plexus,” where animal instincts reside is the contemporary level of our “gland” culture. This has led to the expression “waist high culture,” or popular culture.
We have a lot of gland or “waist high” writers today, writers that hide in the shock and awe of technology, keeping themselves separate from their material, who wow us with what they think without revealing how they think, who divorce us from our pain and fear and allow us to lull in some vicarious pyrotechnical thrill.
Stephen King says, “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affection.” The key words are “letting go.” He continues that the writer will find himself by recognizing that writing is found in what you really love to read.
He is also candid about why he sells a lot of books. It is because “book-buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages.”
Page-turners are books the reader recognizes the people in the book, their behaviors, their surroundings, and their talk. He continues, “When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.” How much is determined by what the reader can remember of the book a day or two later.
Stephen King is not going to win a Nobel Laureate, as popular as he is, because writers such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, while still writing entertaining works, have taken their work to the next level. What level is that?
William Butler Yeats describes it in this way: “Now that my ladder is gone. I must lie down where all ladders start, in the fowl rag-and-bone shop of the heart.” In terms of Charkas, the heart is the fourth level. This is the center of transformation, and birth of the spiritual life. Joyce has Leopold Bloom in Ulysses (1937) call this, “Jesus with his heart on his sleeve.”
There is no posturing at the heart level. Craving has been replaced by spiritual aspirations. Once the writer introduces us to this level, he must guide us through our doubt, as Faulkner has, and bring us through the mist into the clear, recognizing that as tough as things may get, “man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul.” In Charkas, the Yoga would say he has the radiance of God and the energy to look inward for fulfillment.
For the writer, he must decide if he wants to engage the reader in the code of the soul, or simply to entertain, and let it go at that. Dan Brown’s popular “The Da Vinci Code” approximates the latter with his journey into exploring the mystery of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This is a safe voyage, which uses the devices of mystery puzzle solving. Its staying quality can be measured on what is remembered from the story. That is not to say that entertaining writing, per se, is bad. On the contrary, most readers read simply for pleasure, which is fine.
The limits of the writer, whatever his genre, however, are governed by being true to his roots, and writing out of that experience and the education that accrued from it. If he is honest with himself, and gives the reader the key to his, “House of Intellect” as Jacques Barzun puts it, the reader can decide if it is worth the effort.
Emerson said, regarding serious readers, “One must be an inventor to read well.” He was speaking of “self-trust,” what Harold Bloom says in How to Read a Book (2000), “is not an endowment, but is the Second Birth of the mind, which cannot come without years of deep reading.” Deep reading comes from writers who have pondered their soul and have the will to share their insights. Thomas Clayton Wolfe of “Look Homeward, Angel” (1929) and “You Can’t Go Home Again” (1940) fame was such a writer.
Where Stephen King is correct, “writing is likely to be close to what you love to read.” This is the writer’s “House of Intellect,” which may have an ironic connection to his roots.
An appreciation of irony is a powerful tool of the serious reader. Bloom suggests that this is frequently and unknowingly in quest of a mind more original than one’s own. Irony, in any case, is a powerful concept with such writing. Take Hamlet in Shakespeare. He constantly says one thing while meaning another. It challenges the reader, and drives him to ponder and identify with the troubled soul.
But as Vonnegut, Bloom and others have suggested, you cannot teach irony. It is a complex derivative of a mind that works on several levels, often contradictory, and still can carry the reader to a safe landing. Because of the demands of this, Bloom laments, “The loss of irony is the death of reading, and of what has been civilized in our nature.”
This missive was opened with the idea that all writers, whatever their genre, are storytellers. What is also true is that most novels are letters aimed at one person. Clearly, James Joyce’s classic novel, Finnegans Wake (1938) was written with his troubled daughter, Lucia, in mind. The novel is a powerful stream-of-conscious tale of a novelized version of her schizophrenic world with all its horrors, but treated with love, compassion, tenderness, and integrity.
In the end as in the beginning, the final assessment of the writer’s responsibility to the reader is to write as well as he can, as clearly as he can, and as honestly as he can. To do that, he must somehow master language well enough to record on the page what flies wildly and chaotically in his head.
The story the writer tells will still not be the story that is read. The reader will bring his own story to the book and connect the dots of his story with the story being read, thus creating a whole new story. Therefore, no two readers will have the same experience or derive the same benefit.
What brings about this peculiar marriage of writer and reader is that they both have live imaginations and an affinity for this invention called language in the printed word.
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Dr. Fisher is the peripatetic philosopher. His works are posted on his website: www.peripateticphilosopher.com.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
THE WORLD OF AMBULANCE CHASERS!
THE WORLD OF AMBULANCE CHASERS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
My mother-in-law, a deeply religious woman, with a passionate and energetic proselytizing zeal, was telling me on one of my annual visits to her home in Minnesota, about yet another person who had dedicated her life to Christ, as a born again Christian.
This rebirth could be anything from overcoming drug addiction, child abuse, alcoholism, wife beating, profligacy, prostitution, gambling, compulsive lying, kleptomania, or any other version of the seven deadly sins.
When she finished describing this current person-of-interest that had embarked on a remarkable turnaround, I asked her, "What if you don't have any of these addictions? What if you are not guilty of any of these things? What if you are simply a person going along doing your thing without any of these demons ruling you?
She looked at me with an uncharacteristic hardness that erased her normal beguiling compassion with the comment, "Now we're talking about you? Can't you ever think of anyone but yourself?"
The comment stunned me. I recovered slowly, not knowing what to say. I could see how she could make that connection, but what I meant was that 99 percent of the people I met or knew did not fit these descriptions of dependencies.
They didn't come from dysfunctional families, poor, yes, but dysfunctional, no. They weren't exposed to terrible teachers in school, maybe a bit demanding, true, abusive, no.
In life, I have worked with many dedicated and hard working people, some ambitious, yes, others with private agendas, too, and still others that didn't like me too much, but wicked or evil, no.
Personally, I have had some monumental failures, some screw-ups, too, and not always the happiest of marital relations, but it didn't drive me into one of these behaviors because, someone early in my life, my mother, made it clear to me that I was operating on my own nickel, without portfolio, without a safety net, without people of influence paving the way.
She reminded me that when I screwed up I would only have myself to blame. It proved to be a very comforting and surprisingly resilient knowing I had to pick myself up, and go forward no matter what.
Sometimes I was a bit bloody, other times more than a bit disillusioned, and often confused, even it would be safe to say, bitter. But never so bitter to trust someone else to do for me what I could better do for myself.
My mother made me aware that I was lucky to be alive, and that in the end as in the beginning I only had myself to blame or credit for my rise or fall, and that both were the part of a life no matter who you were.
She had an expression that has stayed with me all these years, "You are always half-finished." Somehow that was comforting to know rather than to be anxiety producing.
I am now of an age in which many of these great people that have been in my life are dying of old age a little early. What little success I have had in life, and with what little of the good that they taught me that stuck, I am deeply beholden to them. I name names in my book In the Shadow of the Courthouse: A Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel to honor their memory.
I mention this here because I have never had much patience with the "ambulance chaser mentality" of our society that makes Oprah and Dr. Phil such heroes of that vast wasteland out there called the television audience.
And that is why I asked my mother-in-law, whom I love dearly, "What if you are not guilty of any of these things?" Because, clearly, most people aren't. They will never see their names or pictures in the newspaper, never be interviewed on television, never have a radio interview, but will continue to go quietly about their lives, thank you very much.
We have a big thing about sin, and as I've written in a novel never published, I've never bought into the idea of sin in the first place, only into the idea of waste, wasted life, wasted opportunity, wasted energy, wasted health, wasted worry, and so on. In the end as in the beginning, we are all the same. We are born, we live, we die.
At no time in my life, for example, was I ever interested in smoking or drinking or taking drugs, but in working my way through my low periods as best I could with what support was there for me, or wasn't there for me, realizing that none of us ever escapes the narrow prison of ourselves completely, not even the best of us.
Anyway, what brings this diatribe out of me, was reading an article in The Tampa Tribune today in which Oprah, like the politician that she is, rescinded her earlier claim in support of an author who published his memoir as nonfiction when it appears to have been greatly embellished.
Apparently on "Larry King Live," while this author was being interviewed, Oprah called in iterating what a great book the author had written, and then saying to her regret, "truth doesn't matter."
Well, to her many listeners it seemingly does, which some have estimated at 50 million, if you can believe that.
These listeners are so "other-directed" and so dependent on other people's truth to realize their own, that they were understandably devastated. They were taking this author's troubles and deep lows, apparently largely invented, to be their own.
It was tantamount to a delicious vicarious ride to recovery without pain or struggle as if experiencing themselves being pulled out of whatever hole they were in and lifting them into the beatific light of rejuvenation, not realizing that the whole thing was a gigantic charade, the book a fraud, and now they believed, at their expense.
Oprah said that she feels that she has been betrayed and that her fans have been betrayed. I don't think so. No one can betray us but ourselves.
English playwright William Congreve (1670 - 1729) says it emphatically: "Man was by Nature Women's cully made; we never are, but by ourselves, betrayed."
Thanks to Oprah's endorsement, this author's book has gone through several printings, has made him a multimillionaire, and resulted in a seven-figure advance on additional books, with two books on the top twenty-five best selling list, with this particular book number five in amazon.com's listing of best sellers.
In the Shadow of the Courthouse is a happy book of a nostalgic period in which all these waste makers never crossed most people's minds because parents were too busy working in the war effort to keep America free, and kids were too busy creating their own play and inventing their own toys, because few had enough money to buy luxuries, and even if they did, there was rationing, so there was little point in wanting what they couldn't have.
My book claims on the cover that I have an imperfect memory of events but that this is what I will carry to my grave of those times. It is why it was called Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel.
Oprah doesn't know about the book although a lovely lady has attempted to tell her about it, but Oprah is an ambulance chaser and is not interested in promoting books about functioning families who recognize that struggle is not a curse but a blessing.
In the Shadow of the Courthouse has sold very modestly. Perhaps 2 million other books listed on amazon.com have sold more copies, but those who have read it are the backbone of this nation. They are the people who can see themselves in its pages, can remember themselves struggling. They have loving memories now as they grow into old age without regrets and without fanfare.
They are saddened by the bleeding hearts that have every excuse in the book for why their lives have gone bitter. But it does puzzle them why an author who turned his life from ruin to some purpose would feel the need to make it even more ruinous to delight an audience.
Most people go about their business knowing that sympathy runs deep for losers who appear late blooming winners, while accepting the fact that they are essentially invisible to ambulance chasers, as winning and losing are part of their normal day.
The Germans have a wonderful word for ambulance chasers. It is "schadenfreude." Ambulance chasers were around 2,000 years ago, and they will be around 2,000 years into the future. It is the weak that get our attention, but it is the strong that keeps this world alive, and quietly and unobtrusively so.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dr. Fisher is the peripatetic philosopher: www.peripateticphilosopher.com
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
My mother-in-law, a deeply religious woman, with a passionate and energetic proselytizing zeal, was telling me on one of my annual visits to her home in Minnesota, about yet another person who had dedicated her life to Christ, as a born again Christian.
This rebirth could be anything from overcoming drug addiction, child abuse, alcoholism, wife beating, profligacy, prostitution, gambling, compulsive lying, kleptomania, or any other version of the seven deadly sins.
When she finished describing this current person-of-interest that had embarked on a remarkable turnaround, I asked her, "What if you don't have any of these addictions? What if you are not guilty of any of these things? What if you are simply a person going along doing your thing without any of these demons ruling you?
She looked at me with an uncharacteristic hardness that erased her normal beguiling compassion with the comment, "Now we're talking about you? Can't you ever think of anyone but yourself?"
The comment stunned me. I recovered slowly, not knowing what to say. I could see how she could make that connection, but what I meant was that 99 percent of the people I met or knew did not fit these descriptions of dependencies.
They didn't come from dysfunctional families, poor, yes, but dysfunctional, no. They weren't exposed to terrible teachers in school, maybe a bit demanding, true, abusive, no.
In life, I have worked with many dedicated and hard working people, some ambitious, yes, others with private agendas, too, and still others that didn't like me too much, but wicked or evil, no.
Personally, I have had some monumental failures, some screw-ups, too, and not always the happiest of marital relations, but it didn't drive me into one of these behaviors because, someone early in my life, my mother, made it clear to me that I was operating on my own nickel, without portfolio, without a safety net, without people of influence paving the way.
She reminded me that when I screwed up I would only have myself to blame. It proved to be a very comforting and surprisingly resilient knowing I had to pick myself up, and go forward no matter what.
Sometimes I was a bit bloody, other times more than a bit disillusioned, and often confused, even it would be safe to say, bitter. But never so bitter to trust someone else to do for me what I could better do for myself.
My mother made me aware that I was lucky to be alive, and that in the end as in the beginning I only had myself to blame or credit for my rise or fall, and that both were the part of a life no matter who you were.
She had an expression that has stayed with me all these years, "You are always half-finished." Somehow that was comforting to know rather than to be anxiety producing.
I am now of an age in which many of these great people that have been in my life are dying of old age a little early. What little success I have had in life, and with what little of the good that they taught me that stuck, I am deeply beholden to them. I name names in my book In the Shadow of the Courthouse: A Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel to honor their memory.
I mention this here because I have never had much patience with the "ambulance chaser mentality" of our society that makes Oprah and Dr. Phil such heroes of that vast wasteland out there called the television audience.
And that is why I asked my mother-in-law, whom I love dearly, "What if you are not guilty of any of these things?" Because, clearly, most people aren't. They will never see their names or pictures in the newspaper, never be interviewed on television, never have a radio interview, but will continue to go quietly about their lives, thank you very much.
We have a big thing about sin, and as I've written in a novel never published, I've never bought into the idea of sin in the first place, only into the idea of waste, wasted life, wasted opportunity, wasted energy, wasted health, wasted worry, and so on. In the end as in the beginning, we are all the same. We are born, we live, we die.
At no time in my life, for example, was I ever interested in smoking or drinking or taking drugs, but in working my way through my low periods as best I could with what support was there for me, or wasn't there for me, realizing that none of us ever escapes the narrow prison of ourselves completely, not even the best of us.
Anyway, what brings this diatribe out of me, was reading an article in The Tampa Tribune today in which Oprah, like the politician that she is, rescinded her earlier claim in support of an author who published his memoir as nonfiction when it appears to have been greatly embellished.
Apparently on "Larry King Live," while this author was being interviewed, Oprah called in iterating what a great book the author had written, and then saying to her regret, "truth doesn't matter."
Well, to her many listeners it seemingly does, which some have estimated at 50 million, if you can believe that.
These listeners are so "other-directed" and so dependent on other people's truth to realize their own, that they were understandably devastated. They were taking this author's troubles and deep lows, apparently largely invented, to be their own.
It was tantamount to a delicious vicarious ride to recovery without pain or struggle as if experiencing themselves being pulled out of whatever hole they were in and lifting them into the beatific light of rejuvenation, not realizing that the whole thing was a gigantic charade, the book a fraud, and now they believed, at their expense.
Oprah said that she feels that she has been betrayed and that her fans have been betrayed. I don't think so. No one can betray us but ourselves.
English playwright William Congreve (1670 - 1729) says it emphatically: "Man was by Nature Women's cully made; we never are, but by ourselves, betrayed."
Thanks to Oprah's endorsement, this author's book has gone through several printings, has made him a multimillionaire, and resulted in a seven-figure advance on additional books, with two books on the top twenty-five best selling list, with this particular book number five in amazon.com's listing of best sellers.
In the Shadow of the Courthouse is a happy book of a nostalgic period in which all these waste makers never crossed most people's minds because parents were too busy working in the war effort to keep America free, and kids were too busy creating their own play and inventing their own toys, because few had enough money to buy luxuries, and even if they did, there was rationing, so there was little point in wanting what they couldn't have.
My book claims on the cover that I have an imperfect memory of events but that this is what I will carry to my grave of those times. It is why it was called Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel.
Oprah doesn't know about the book although a lovely lady has attempted to tell her about it, but Oprah is an ambulance chaser and is not interested in promoting books about functioning families who recognize that struggle is not a curse but a blessing.
In the Shadow of the Courthouse has sold very modestly. Perhaps 2 million other books listed on amazon.com have sold more copies, but those who have read it are the backbone of this nation. They are the people who can see themselves in its pages, can remember themselves struggling. They have loving memories now as they grow into old age without regrets and without fanfare.
They are saddened by the bleeding hearts that have every excuse in the book for why their lives have gone bitter. But it does puzzle them why an author who turned his life from ruin to some purpose would feel the need to make it even more ruinous to delight an audience.
Most people go about their business knowing that sympathy runs deep for losers who appear late blooming winners, while accepting the fact that they are essentially invisible to ambulance chasers, as winning and losing are part of their normal day.
The Germans have a wonderful word for ambulance chasers. It is "schadenfreude." Ambulance chasers were around 2,000 years ago, and they will be around 2,000 years into the future. It is the weak that get our attention, but it is the strong that keeps this world alive, and quietly and unobtrusively so.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dr. Fisher is the peripatetic philosopher: www.peripateticphilosopher.com
Friday, January 20, 2006
REMEMBERING A REMARKABLE MAN!
REMEMBERING A REMARKABLE MAN!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
"Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye; and where care lodges sleep will never lie." Shakespeare
My sister, Pat Waddell, sent me the obituary of a quite remarkable Clintonian, the Most Reverend Richard "Dickie" Von Ah, who passed away on January 3, 2006. I remember Dickie with great affection because of two specific incidences. They have stayed with me these many years, and bring a smile to my lips.
In the first instance his Eminence, Ralph L. Hayes, Bishop of Davenport, was confirming us at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Clinton, Iowa. That was a big moment for us in our preteen years.
Sister Mary Gertrude and Sister Mary Cecile had prepared us well to respond to the bishop's questions before he anointed us in the presence of our sponsors and families as "Soldiers of Jesus Christ."
To say we were nervous, as the handsome bishop looked down on us from the marble altar rail and lushly carpeted steps is to beg the question. Bishop Hayes was a striking figure, tall, with a thick mane of white hair, an imperial Irish face, and a powerful body draped in a red cassock and a long embroidered white surplice. One wondered if God could be any more regal.
Part of the ritual was for the bishop to quiz us on the tenets of our Catholic faith as our parents, relatives and friends looked on with anticipation. Words rolled off bishop Hayes's tongue in distinct melodious tones like quivering corn in a light summer breeze. The sound of his voice, alone, sent shivering chills up my spine.
He asked if anyone could recite "the Apostles Creed." Immediately, all eyes moved quickly to inspect their shoes, that is, except Dickie's. He not only looked the bishop in the eye, but also raised his hand to answer. The bishop with a beatific smile motioned with his hand for him to speak.
I was sitting next to Dickie, and his knees were knocking against each other so loud that it sounded as if the church were infested with crickets. It appeared I was the only one that noticed.
With his hand still in the air, out came the creed in a stuttering voice. It was clear he was nervous, and that this was a monumental display of courage as he tripped over phrases, and skipped over passages, coming to an abrupt, "Amen," with a sigh of relief.
The oratory resembled little of the Nicene Creed adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., but it obviously impressed the good bishop.
Bishop Hayes was ecstatic. He stretched his arms out as if to embrace the whole congregation, his eyes warmly fixed on Dickie, and then, after a painfully long pause, said something so remarkable that it has stayed with me all these years.
"I don't know you, son, but I see the making of a priest in you."
I looked at Dickie to see his reaction. His eyes were locked on the bishop, smiling warmly as if they were in collusion on some great secret.
And of course, a priest Dickie did become with an illustrious career, touching the lives of many Iowans, including those in his hometown, being pastor for a time at Clinton's own St. Irenaeus.
Many years earlier, however, he was a student at St. Ambrose College in Davenport, while I was a student at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Although both of us poor boys, we had the opportunity to work summers at Clinton Foods, a huge corn processing refinery, while going to college.
The company refined corn into starch, corn syrup, dextrose (corn sugar), dextrin (corn glue), lactic acid, livestock feed, and hops for breweries. What's more, the company paid us the same wage scale for the jobs we did as for the union workers. Consequently, a summer job here could go a long way toward paying the costs of room and board for college in the fall.
It was my second summer working at Clinton Foods, but it was Dickie's first. It would prove to be a fateful one for him. It was our first week on the job, and we were sitting on makeshift benches eating our lunch with other factory workers in the sugar refinery of plant one.
A worker was holding court complaining about the lunch his wife had packed for him that day. This grizzly old veteran, and not for the first time, was our lunchtime entertainment.
His comments went something like this, and I am paraphrasing from memory of a half century ago, but I think I retain the essence of his remarks:
"Can you f------ believe it! Look at this f----- lunch! Here my f------ wife has all day to make a decent f----- lunch, and what does she give me? She gives me this f----- lunch meat with this f----- cheese, and slops on this f----- mustard that now smells more rancid than rat's piss. Can you f----- believe it! She expects me to eat this f---- sandwich and work the f------ day without upchucking. If that isn't bad enough, she couldn't find more moldy bread if she f------- tried. If I threw it to the birds, one touch of their beaks and they'd give it a f------ pass. Now what the f--- does all this mean? I don't know. I'm just at a f------ loss for words. Do you think she doesn't give a f--- about her husband? Do you think she just throws the f------ thing together to get it f------ done? I don't know. She actually is a fine f------ old lady. But when it comes to f------ lunch making, she's f------ out to lunch. (Everyone laughs, except Dickie.)
It so happened that I was sitting next to Dickie once again, and his knees were knocking together as they had been those many years before during confirmation. Nobody seemed to notice because everybody was laughing at the lunchtime clown.
Dickie moved to the other side of the warehouse, and motioned for me to join him, which I did.
"That man is so disgusting," he said with venom in his voice. "He is so full of mortal sin that I pray providence will rescue him from his evil ways. He must change his life, or he's doomed for eternity."
Then he turned to me his face drenched in sorrow. "Jim, can you believe this awful man?" When I didn't answer, he nearly shouted. "I absolutely cannot take it! I can't work here! I'm quitting right now!"
I didn't know Dickie well. I knew him as our equipment manager on our basketball team. We were city and Catholic diocese's champs that year. I have a picture of that team on the wall of my study, which I wrote about in a recent memoir written as a novel.
At St. Patrick's, the seventh and eighth grade students were together in the same classroom, so I knew him as a student. When one class was studying, the other would be reciting, and so I remembered his supple mind.
There was no point in arguing with him. He was too upset. Instead, I asked him. "Dickie, what do you want to be?"
"A priest of course. You know that. I'm entering the seminary next fall after I graduate."
"Yes," I confessed, "I knew you were serious about the priesthood." Then feeling a bit coy, I added, "You'll make a good priest. I'm certain of it."
"Thank you," he replied shyly.
"But I have to tell you something." He looked at me curiously. "That man that so disgusts you is a member of St. Mary's parish." His look told me he didn't know. "Yes, he's a Catholic. His children go to school at St. Mary's. And, Dickie, he attends mass every Sunday.
"What I'm trying to say is that's the way he talks. I'll bet he has no idea how many times he says that f-word. I know him. He's not a bad guy. In fact, that's your parish, Dickie, guys like that."
He looked at me, didn't say anything, closed his lunch pail, and took off, never to be seen at Clinton Foods again. It was also the last time I saw him.
Reading his obituary, and seeing all the parishes he served over a long and successful pastoral career, I felt I was not the only one that never forgot that day. May his soul forever rest in peace now that he is home. He will be missed.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
"Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye; and where care lodges sleep will never lie." Shakespeare
My sister, Pat Waddell, sent me the obituary of a quite remarkable Clintonian, the Most Reverend Richard "Dickie" Von Ah, who passed away on January 3, 2006. I remember Dickie with great affection because of two specific incidences. They have stayed with me these many years, and bring a smile to my lips.
In the first instance his Eminence, Ralph L. Hayes, Bishop of Davenport, was confirming us at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Clinton, Iowa. That was a big moment for us in our preteen years.
Sister Mary Gertrude and Sister Mary Cecile had prepared us well to respond to the bishop's questions before he anointed us in the presence of our sponsors and families as "Soldiers of Jesus Christ."
To say we were nervous, as the handsome bishop looked down on us from the marble altar rail and lushly carpeted steps is to beg the question. Bishop Hayes was a striking figure, tall, with a thick mane of white hair, an imperial Irish face, and a powerful body draped in a red cassock and a long embroidered white surplice. One wondered if God could be any more regal.
Part of the ritual was for the bishop to quiz us on the tenets of our Catholic faith as our parents, relatives and friends looked on with anticipation. Words rolled off bishop Hayes's tongue in distinct melodious tones like quivering corn in a light summer breeze. The sound of his voice, alone, sent shivering chills up my spine.
He asked if anyone could recite "the Apostles Creed." Immediately, all eyes moved quickly to inspect their shoes, that is, except Dickie's. He not only looked the bishop in the eye, but also raised his hand to answer. The bishop with a beatific smile motioned with his hand for him to speak.
I was sitting next to Dickie, and his knees were knocking against each other so loud that it sounded as if the church were infested with crickets. It appeared I was the only one that noticed.
With his hand still in the air, out came the creed in a stuttering voice. It was clear he was nervous, and that this was a monumental display of courage as he tripped over phrases, and skipped over passages, coming to an abrupt, "Amen," with a sigh of relief.
The oratory resembled little of the Nicene Creed adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., but it obviously impressed the good bishop.
Bishop Hayes was ecstatic. He stretched his arms out as if to embrace the whole congregation, his eyes warmly fixed on Dickie, and then, after a painfully long pause, said something so remarkable that it has stayed with me all these years.
"I don't know you, son, but I see the making of a priest in you."
I looked at Dickie to see his reaction. His eyes were locked on the bishop, smiling warmly as if they were in collusion on some great secret.
And of course, a priest Dickie did become with an illustrious career, touching the lives of many Iowans, including those in his hometown, being pastor for a time at Clinton's own St. Irenaeus.
Many years earlier, however, he was a student at St. Ambrose College in Davenport, while I was a student at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Although both of us poor boys, we had the opportunity to work summers at Clinton Foods, a huge corn processing refinery, while going to college.
The company refined corn into starch, corn syrup, dextrose (corn sugar), dextrin (corn glue), lactic acid, livestock feed, and hops for breweries. What's more, the company paid us the same wage scale for the jobs we did as for the union workers. Consequently, a summer job here could go a long way toward paying the costs of room and board for college in the fall.
It was my second summer working at Clinton Foods, but it was Dickie's first. It would prove to be a fateful one for him. It was our first week on the job, and we were sitting on makeshift benches eating our lunch with other factory workers in the sugar refinery of plant one.
A worker was holding court complaining about the lunch his wife had packed for him that day. This grizzly old veteran, and not for the first time, was our lunchtime entertainment.
His comments went something like this, and I am paraphrasing from memory of a half century ago, but I think I retain the essence of his remarks:
"Can you f------ believe it! Look at this f----- lunch! Here my f------ wife has all day to make a decent f----- lunch, and what does she give me? She gives me this f----- lunch meat with this f----- cheese, and slops on this f----- mustard that now smells more rancid than rat's piss. Can you f----- believe it! She expects me to eat this f---- sandwich and work the f------ day without upchucking. If that isn't bad enough, she couldn't find more moldy bread if she f------- tried. If I threw it to the birds, one touch of their beaks and they'd give it a f------ pass. Now what the f--- does all this mean? I don't know. I'm just at a f------ loss for words. Do you think she doesn't give a f--- about her husband? Do you think she just throws the f------ thing together to get it f------ done? I don't know. She actually is a fine f------ old lady. But when it comes to f------ lunch making, she's f------ out to lunch. (Everyone laughs, except Dickie.)
It so happened that I was sitting next to Dickie once again, and his knees were knocking together as they had been those many years before during confirmation. Nobody seemed to notice because everybody was laughing at the lunchtime clown.
Dickie moved to the other side of the warehouse, and motioned for me to join him, which I did.
"That man is so disgusting," he said with venom in his voice. "He is so full of mortal sin that I pray providence will rescue him from his evil ways. He must change his life, or he's doomed for eternity."
Then he turned to me his face drenched in sorrow. "Jim, can you believe this awful man?" When I didn't answer, he nearly shouted. "I absolutely cannot take it! I can't work here! I'm quitting right now!"
I didn't know Dickie well. I knew him as our equipment manager on our basketball team. We were city and Catholic diocese's champs that year. I have a picture of that team on the wall of my study, which I wrote about in a recent memoir written as a novel.
At St. Patrick's, the seventh and eighth grade students were together in the same classroom, so I knew him as a student. When one class was studying, the other would be reciting, and so I remembered his supple mind.
There was no point in arguing with him. He was too upset. Instead, I asked him. "Dickie, what do you want to be?"
"A priest of course. You know that. I'm entering the seminary next fall after I graduate."
"Yes," I confessed, "I knew you were serious about the priesthood." Then feeling a bit coy, I added, "You'll make a good priest. I'm certain of it."
"Thank you," he replied shyly.
"But I have to tell you something." He looked at me curiously. "That man that so disgusts you is a member of St. Mary's parish." His look told me he didn't know. "Yes, he's a Catholic. His children go to school at St. Mary's. And, Dickie, he attends mass every Sunday.
"What I'm trying to say is that's the way he talks. I'll bet he has no idea how many times he says that f-word. I know him. He's not a bad guy. In fact, that's your parish, Dickie, guys like that."
He looked at me, didn't say anything, closed his lunch pail, and took off, never to be seen at Clinton Foods again. It was also the last time I saw him.
Reading his obituary, and seeing all the parishes he served over a long and successful pastoral career, I felt I was not the only one that never forgot that day. May his soul forever rest in peace now that he is home. He will be missed.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
NOWHERE IS A CONUNDRUM!
NOWHERE!
AN ESSAY ON A CONUNDRUM
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
My book "Near Journey's End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-indulgent Man" has failed to interest any publisher. It could be converted to a utopian novel of the negative variety, but I have too many other projects in various states of completion to consider that option.
I am thinking of publishing the complete book, less than 150 pages, on my blog, but with a title change: "NOWHERE! THE CONUNDRUM OF TECHNOLOGY AS SALVATION."
The reason for this change of heart was inspired by my reflection on a selection of utopian novels. It occurred to me that "NOWHERE" on my blog might be thought provoking enough for the reader to pursue the subject more deeply. That is the essence of utopian novels. They get you thinking.
"NOWHERE" is not a utopian novel, but yet it has a surprising connection with the genre, as I hope to show here.
"NOWHERE" is about ecology, or the lapse of it over the centuries, illustrating how "cut and control" thinking has tended to gamble on a new advantage without assessing the irrevocable price exacted for it.
The book might better be described as dealing with the ecology of the mind, as it is the mind, after all, that is preventing man from getting his ducks in a row to appreciate the threat to his freedom, his dignity, his self-respect, his integrity, and his need for love in a shrinking world that obsessively wants him to become a "thing" to be used and disposable without conscience as things can be.
Writers immemorial have addressed this conundrum and often through the utopian novel.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The word "utopian" can be literally translated as "nowhere."
We have had several positive and negative utopian views of "nowhere" throughout the centuries.
How to make a better world for men to live in has fascinated the minds of thinkers in every age. From Plato to the present day, men have been thinking and writing about what the world would be like if men could create an earthly paradise. There have also been those that have felt compelled to paint an otherwise bleak picture of that possibility, especially in the last century.
Thomas More's "Utopia" (1516) combined a most penetrating criticism of his own society, its irrationality and injustice with a picture of a society, which, though not perfect had come to solve most of the human problems, which sounded insolvable to his contemporaries.
Less well known are the Italian friar Tommasso Campenella's "City of the Sun" (1602) and the German humanist Johann Andrea's "Christianopolis" (1619), the latter being the most modern of the three.
Closer to our time is the utopian novel by Edward Bellamy "Looking Backward" (1888). This novel is part of the great American tradition as expressed in the thinking of Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in support of man's individuality and social perfectibility.
Bellamy, looking ahead 112 years to 2000 from 1888, envisions a society where there is no money; the state gives everyone no matter what his job, a card that contains the same amount of credit for a year's expense. There is no chance, however, for anyone to spend his credit foolishly as the government takes care to see that he is supervised.
Crime is treated as a mental disease with criminals placed in hospitals and treated as mental cases. Bellamy showed how crime was cut down considerably once money was abolished. Theft became silly when everyone had the right and power to own the same things.
The head of government was the President, who was controlled by Congress. Older professionals who reported to the President controlled education and medicine. A woman chosen by the women of the country had the power to veto any bill concerning the rights of the female population. There was no public discontent with government, and there was wonderful international cooperation. More than a socialist utopia, Bellamy rationalized a case for economic revolution.
In the twentieth century, this optimism and positive utopian mindset, after nearly two thousand years of Western tradition, saw hope transform into a mood and temper of despair, as 20 million mortals perished in World War I and World War II.
Man felt betrayed by capitalism, and then by socialism, and finally by Western Christianity. Barbarism, reactionism, and terror bordering on insanity appeared to grip the oldest centers of culture in the Western world.
War, too, had come to cause moral fatigue and disenchantment with conventional and institutional society stamped as the nemesis.
It is no accident that existentialism was given poignant expression by resistant fighters Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus after the terror they experienced in France and North Africa during World War II. "Now" and "nowhere" were on a collision course as they developed a dialogue to capture this. Nihilism, nausea, boredom and self-estrangement were their themes.
George Orwell would publish his compelling novel "1948" (1949) shortly after that war depicting the new mood of hopelessness, powerlessness, and meaninglessness, which would come to pervade our own age.
Then there was Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We: The Mathematical Society" (1923), where total regimentation is reduced to precise bureaucratic algorithms; Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932), where a world six hundred years into the future is described with human beings turned out by mass production; Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (1966), where books are banned and combusting at that temperature; and Jack London's "The Iron Heel" (1906), which anticipated fascism in all its repressive ugliness.
These books express the mood of our present from some distance in the past with a warming for the future in a way similar to Orwell's.
These negative or anti-utopias sensed the mood of powerlessness of modern man just as the earlier pro-utopias anticipated the incipient mood of self-confidence of post-medieval man.
Utopian books alert us to change and access its price.
We see this as we have moved from the agricultural period, which placed some strain on Mother Nature with its "cut and control" clearing of forests for planting, and redirecting rivers for irrigation, while giving little mind to their impact on fragile eco-systems or the stability of the environment.
This "cut and control" inclination was then compounded in the industrial age which found economic reasons to justify slavery, exploit natural resources, regiment citizens into hostile slums, while ignoring the demands of public health and sanitation, or the consequences of population explosion, urbanization and toxic crime.
With positive utopia, everyone would have enough to eat, war would be unnecessary because technical progress would give every country so much wealth there would be no need for territorial conquest, and the globe would become unified in cooperation. This was the mantra of "Looking Backward."
On the other hand, Zamyatin's "We" envisioned a totally bureaucratized society in which man is a number and loses all sense of individuality. In Huxley's work the main tool for turning man into an automaton is "hypnoid mass suggestion," which allows the dispensing of terror.
The message of negative utopian novels is clear:
Fear is dominant as modern society rushes to control man into a manageable "thing," to change his human nature so that he will forget his longings for freedom, for dignity, for self-respect, for integrity, and for love.
In Zamyatin's "We" a brain operation similar to a lobotomy is necessary to get rid of the human demands of human nature. In Huxley's "Brave New World" artificial biological selection (similar to cloning) and drugs are necessary, while in Orwell's "1984" it is unlimited torture and brainwashing to erase the conscience
War is also a "1984" theme. Arms production is an economic necessity or society could not function. So, it is constantly preparing for war, constantly afraid of attack, obsessed with finding new weapons to annihilate its enemies.
There are many other utopian novels that are meant to spike our attention. One that made me painfully aware of Nazism as a boy during World War II was "It Can't Happen Here" (1935) by Sinclair Lewis.
The Lewis novel was written during Hitler's rise in Germany. He could see the long tradition of irrational demagoguery in American politics being a perfect climate for a Hitler-like rise in our midst. It is perhaps the reason I was never taken in by Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s when I was in college and the communist "Red Scare" was the hysteria of the moment. McCarthy used this hysteria creating "the big lie," causing people in power, including the president, to cower to his demands. McCarthyism is now a word in our dictionary to describe this deceit.
Reading these books has caused me to appreciate how much they have contributed to my awareness of what is now happening. Yet, I must admit that NOWHERE IS A CONUNDRUM that cannot be solved by a book. Man must solve his dilemma, but he cannot solve it if he does not sense it; and once he senses it, he must take ownership of it, or he will remain like one hand clapping in the forest.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AN ESSAY ON A CONUNDRUM
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
My book "Near Journey's End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-indulgent Man" has failed to interest any publisher. It could be converted to a utopian novel of the negative variety, but I have too many other projects in various states of completion to consider that option.
I am thinking of publishing the complete book, less than 150 pages, on my blog, but with a title change: "NOWHERE! THE CONUNDRUM OF TECHNOLOGY AS SALVATION."
The reason for this change of heart was inspired by my reflection on a selection of utopian novels. It occurred to me that "NOWHERE" on my blog might be thought provoking enough for the reader to pursue the subject more deeply. That is the essence of utopian novels. They get you thinking.
"NOWHERE" is not a utopian novel, but yet it has a surprising connection with the genre, as I hope to show here.
"NOWHERE" is about ecology, or the lapse of it over the centuries, illustrating how "cut and control" thinking has tended to gamble on a new advantage without assessing the irrevocable price exacted for it.
The book might better be described as dealing with the ecology of the mind, as it is the mind, after all, that is preventing man from getting his ducks in a row to appreciate the threat to his freedom, his dignity, his self-respect, his integrity, and his need for love in a shrinking world that obsessively wants him to become a "thing" to be used and disposable without conscience as things can be.
Writers immemorial have addressed this conundrum and often through the utopian novel.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The word "utopian" can be literally translated as "nowhere."
We have had several positive and negative utopian views of "nowhere" throughout the centuries.
How to make a better world for men to live in has fascinated the minds of thinkers in every age. From Plato to the present day, men have been thinking and writing about what the world would be like if men could create an earthly paradise. There have also been those that have felt compelled to paint an otherwise bleak picture of that possibility, especially in the last century.
Thomas More's "Utopia" (1516) combined a most penetrating criticism of his own society, its irrationality and injustice with a picture of a society, which, though not perfect had come to solve most of the human problems, which sounded insolvable to his contemporaries.
Less well known are the Italian friar Tommasso Campenella's "City of the Sun" (1602) and the German humanist Johann Andrea's "Christianopolis" (1619), the latter being the most modern of the three.
Closer to our time is the utopian novel by Edward Bellamy "Looking Backward" (1888). This novel is part of the great American tradition as expressed in the thinking of Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in support of man's individuality and social perfectibility.
Bellamy, looking ahead 112 years to 2000 from 1888, envisions a society where there is no money; the state gives everyone no matter what his job, a card that contains the same amount of credit for a year's expense. There is no chance, however, for anyone to spend his credit foolishly as the government takes care to see that he is supervised.
Crime is treated as a mental disease with criminals placed in hospitals and treated as mental cases. Bellamy showed how crime was cut down considerably once money was abolished. Theft became silly when everyone had the right and power to own the same things.
The head of government was the President, who was controlled by Congress. Older professionals who reported to the President controlled education and medicine. A woman chosen by the women of the country had the power to veto any bill concerning the rights of the female population. There was no public discontent with government, and there was wonderful international cooperation. More than a socialist utopia, Bellamy rationalized a case for economic revolution.
In the twentieth century, this optimism and positive utopian mindset, after nearly two thousand years of Western tradition, saw hope transform into a mood and temper of despair, as 20 million mortals perished in World War I and World War II.
Man felt betrayed by capitalism, and then by socialism, and finally by Western Christianity. Barbarism, reactionism, and terror bordering on insanity appeared to grip the oldest centers of culture in the Western world.
War, too, had come to cause moral fatigue and disenchantment with conventional and institutional society stamped as the nemesis.
It is no accident that existentialism was given poignant expression by resistant fighters Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus after the terror they experienced in France and North Africa during World War II. "Now" and "nowhere" were on a collision course as they developed a dialogue to capture this. Nihilism, nausea, boredom and self-estrangement were their themes.
George Orwell would publish his compelling novel "1948" (1949) shortly after that war depicting the new mood of hopelessness, powerlessness, and meaninglessness, which would come to pervade our own age.
Then there was Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We: The Mathematical Society" (1923), where total regimentation is reduced to precise bureaucratic algorithms; Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932), where a world six hundred years into the future is described with human beings turned out by mass production; Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (1966), where books are banned and combusting at that temperature; and Jack London's "The Iron Heel" (1906), which anticipated fascism in all its repressive ugliness.
These books express the mood of our present from some distance in the past with a warming for the future in a way similar to Orwell's.
These negative or anti-utopias sensed the mood of powerlessness of modern man just as the earlier pro-utopias anticipated the incipient mood of self-confidence of post-medieval man.
Utopian books alert us to change and access its price.
We see this as we have moved from the agricultural period, which placed some strain on Mother Nature with its "cut and control" clearing of forests for planting, and redirecting rivers for irrigation, while giving little mind to their impact on fragile eco-systems or the stability of the environment.
This "cut and control" inclination was then compounded in the industrial age which found economic reasons to justify slavery, exploit natural resources, regiment citizens into hostile slums, while ignoring the demands of public health and sanitation, or the consequences of population explosion, urbanization and toxic crime.
With positive utopia, everyone would have enough to eat, war would be unnecessary because technical progress would give every country so much wealth there would be no need for territorial conquest, and the globe would become unified in cooperation. This was the mantra of "Looking Backward."
On the other hand, Zamyatin's "We" envisioned a totally bureaucratized society in which man is a number and loses all sense of individuality. In Huxley's work the main tool for turning man into an automaton is "hypnoid mass suggestion," which allows the dispensing of terror.
The message of negative utopian novels is clear:
Fear is dominant as modern society rushes to control man into a manageable "thing," to change his human nature so that he will forget his longings for freedom, for dignity, for self-respect, for integrity, and for love.
In Zamyatin's "We" a brain operation similar to a lobotomy is necessary to get rid of the human demands of human nature. In Huxley's "Brave New World" artificial biological selection (similar to cloning) and drugs are necessary, while in Orwell's "1984" it is unlimited torture and brainwashing to erase the conscience
War is also a "1984" theme. Arms production is an economic necessity or society could not function. So, it is constantly preparing for war, constantly afraid of attack, obsessed with finding new weapons to annihilate its enemies.
There are many other utopian novels that are meant to spike our attention. One that made me painfully aware of Nazism as a boy during World War II was "It Can't Happen Here" (1935) by Sinclair Lewis.
The Lewis novel was written during Hitler's rise in Germany. He could see the long tradition of irrational demagoguery in American politics being a perfect climate for a Hitler-like rise in our midst. It is perhaps the reason I was never taken in by Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s when I was in college and the communist "Red Scare" was the hysteria of the moment. McCarthy used this hysteria creating "the big lie," causing people in power, including the president, to cower to his demands. McCarthyism is now a word in our dictionary to describe this deceit.
Reading these books has caused me to appreciate how much they have contributed to my awareness of what is now happening. Yet, I must admit that NOWHERE IS A CONUNDRUM that cannot be solved by a book. Man must solve his dilemma, but he cannot solve it if he does not sense it; and once he senses it, he must take ownership of it, or he will remain like one hand clapping in the forest.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Monday, January 16, 2006
THE PASSION OF AN OPRAH FAN THAT WANTS MY BOOK ON HER SHOW!
THE PASSION OF AN OPRAH FAN THAT WANTS MY BOOK ON HER SHOW
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
Reference: A person in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa wrote Oprah and thought that my book IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (2003) would be a good subject for her program. She is saddened and disheartened because she has not heard from Oprah, claiming, “I didn’t send her an email, but wrote her a personal letter.” Oprah might get 50,000 such letters a week. This was my reply.
The purpose of a novel is to help the heart of man know itself.
Henry James (1843 – 1916)
American Novelist
You are truly a dear friend. Thank you for writing to Oprah about my book.
No, I never heard from her, but I agree with you. She must get tons of such letters. Thank you for the effort.
The book has done better than I thought it would. I wish more Iowans, though, other than Clinton, Iowans would read it.
One of the things that I learned in my attempt to get the word out that there is very much a territorial imperative at play with Iowa readers, that is, the old saw, of NIH, "not invented here."
Clinton is a unique place which has produced perhaps more creative people per capita than most other Iowa cities, but Davenport, Des Moines, Iowa City, Dubuque, et al., would seem to command more respect. That is my take on it.
To wit, The Davenport Democrat never bothered to answer my queries; nor did the Des Monies Register, or The Daily Iowan (Iowa City), when I asked that the book be reviewed, offering to send a copy.
On the other hand, NPR radio in Rock Island did put a program on about the book, which I appreciated: as did KROS in Clinton. But strangely, that was the limit.
Nobody in Iowa City would take up the charge, not even my University of Iowa Alumni Magazine. They review many books, and I wrote them several times and asked why they didn't review mine, but never received a reply. They did mention the book in the alumni section.
However, the University of Iowa Collection ordered a copy, as did Iowa State University for their collection, but beyond that, "nada."
The book business is brutal, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they can handle rejection, disappointment, and discouragement as part of the profession.
This is not because book people are unfeeling people. It is because it is terribly competitive, profits margins are very narrow, and publishers have to offer big contracts to celebrity authors and their children, leaving little room to review much less edit manuscripts they do accept. Quality control is not great in the book business as typos stare out at the careful reader.
That said the City of Clinton was gigantically supportive of IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, as was The Clinton Herald, Guzzardo's, and as were many, many Clinton individuals and the Don Farr Network.
Clintonians took the time to spread the word, as you did, as did many Clintonians spread across the United States.
People write to me and say that every member of their family has read the book, and that it goes from household to household.
Others apologize for buying it as a "used book" on line for a fraction of the cost of a new book. THAT IS OKAY! It was written to be read, not to make money.
I've even had people write and tell me they have read and reread it several times, getting something new out it each time they do. That is what a book is supposed to be, about touching lives.
Someone posted a review on amazon.com stating that it was a "me" book. Of course, it was a "me book." It was a memoir written as a novel, and what is a memoir but about the person who wrote the book?
Yet a memoir's hidden message is that the book IS NOT ALL ABOUT THE AUTHOR, but a way of introducing the reader to him or herself; to identify with the book in terms of his or her own life.
Having said all that, I would encourage anyone that is a writer to keep on writing and never to be discouraged.
You are a successful writer if you are writing about the things that you know, love and understand, and desire to share.
A very dear friend of mine in Clinton says I need a good editor, and I do. I write quickly and passionately, and then move on, and often it shows. Editing is an important part of writing, but it has never interested me too much. I think people get the general drift of what I am saying.
Besides, I have so much to say, and the clock is ticking.
Thank you again for writing to Oprah. I am so happy that you did it, and now we all move on. Always be well,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
Reference: A person in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa wrote Oprah and thought that my book IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (2003) would be a good subject for her program. She is saddened and disheartened because she has not heard from Oprah, claiming, “I didn’t send her an email, but wrote her a personal letter.” Oprah might get 50,000 such letters a week. This was my reply.
The purpose of a novel is to help the heart of man know itself.
Henry James (1843 – 1916)
American Novelist
You are truly a dear friend. Thank you for writing to Oprah about my book.
No, I never heard from her, but I agree with you. She must get tons of such letters. Thank you for the effort.
The book has done better than I thought it would. I wish more Iowans, though, other than Clinton, Iowans would read it.
One of the things that I learned in my attempt to get the word out that there is very much a territorial imperative at play with Iowa readers, that is, the old saw, of NIH, "not invented here."
Clinton is a unique place which has produced perhaps more creative people per capita than most other Iowa cities, but Davenport, Des Moines, Iowa City, Dubuque, et al., would seem to command more respect. That is my take on it.
To wit, The Davenport Democrat never bothered to answer my queries; nor did the Des Monies Register, or The Daily Iowan (Iowa City), when I asked that the book be reviewed, offering to send a copy.
On the other hand, NPR radio in Rock Island did put a program on about the book, which I appreciated: as did KROS in Clinton. But strangely, that was the limit.
Nobody in Iowa City would take up the charge, not even my University of Iowa Alumni Magazine. They review many books, and I wrote them several times and asked why they didn't review mine, but never received a reply. They did mention the book in the alumni section.
However, the University of Iowa Collection ordered a copy, as did Iowa State University for their collection, but beyond that, "nada."
The book business is brutal, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they can handle rejection, disappointment, and discouragement as part of the profession.
This is not because book people are unfeeling people. It is because it is terribly competitive, profits margins are very narrow, and publishers have to offer big contracts to celebrity authors and their children, leaving little room to review much less edit manuscripts they do accept. Quality control is not great in the book business as typos stare out at the careful reader.
That said the City of Clinton was gigantically supportive of IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, as was The Clinton Herald, Guzzardo's, and as were many, many Clinton individuals and the Don Farr Network.
Clintonians took the time to spread the word, as you did, as did many Clintonians spread across the United States.
People write to me and say that every member of their family has read the book, and that it goes from household to household.
Others apologize for buying it as a "used book" on line for a fraction of the cost of a new book. THAT IS OKAY! It was written to be read, not to make money.
I've even had people write and tell me they have read and reread it several times, getting something new out it each time they do. That is what a book is supposed to be, about touching lives.
Someone posted a review on amazon.com stating that it was a "me" book. Of course, it was a "me book." It was a memoir written as a novel, and what is a memoir but about the person who wrote the book?
Yet a memoir's hidden message is that the book IS NOT ALL ABOUT THE AUTHOR, but a way of introducing the reader to him or herself; to identify with the book in terms of his or her own life.
Having said all that, I would encourage anyone that is a writer to keep on writing and never to be discouraged.
You are a successful writer if you are writing about the things that you know, love and understand, and desire to share.
A very dear friend of mine in Clinton says I need a good editor, and I do. I write quickly and passionately, and then move on, and often it shows. Editing is an important part of writing, but it has never interested me too much. I think people get the general drift of what I am saying.
Besides, I have so much to say, and the clock is ticking.
Thank you again for writing to Oprah. I am so happy that you did it, and now we all move on. Always be well,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Saturday, January 14, 2006
"IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT ME!"
IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT ME!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
“What comes through (watching the senate confirmation hearing on Judge Sam Alito for the Supreme Court of the United States) is that it is not all about him.”
David Brooks, Columnist, New York Times
On the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (January 13, 2006)
Watching the senate confirmation hearings on Judge Samuel Alito sent shudders through me for the lack of civility shown the man by some senators. Obviously, this bipartisan panel of senators has a duty to screen nominees to the Supreme Court. But this doesn’t give them the right to badger the person in reckless abandon before the television cameras for special interest groups.
Often, I had to move from the television my stomach tied in knots wondering how anyone could take such abuse. I was one with his wife when she rose in tears one day and left the senate chamber.
When my wife came home from work, she asked me, “How did it go today?” I shook my head. “It didn’t,” I said, adding with a touch of remorse, "it's a wonder we get anyone to run for this high court.” Clearly, Judge Alito proved more gifted than this panel, which instead embarrassed itself as well as the nation with its inane savagery.
It was tantamount to psychological abuse bordering on torture. Yes, I said torture!
It is probably clear at this point that I identified with the judge. He came out of a working class family and neighborhood, as I did, and rose to these heady heights because he believed in the work ethic, respect for authority, to be all you can be, and to pursue the American dream by paying attention to detail, practicing fairness, and being guided by a set of principles that give expression to your integrity, and concern for the rights of your fellowman. He has had a rewarding and useful life for the attention.
His strength and the reason he was unflagging in his patience comes from what columnist David Brook refers to as, “It is not all about me!” Some reporters described Judge Alito as not being as cultured or sophisticated as John Roberts, the last nominee. and now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Perhaps these comments were a reaction to his opening statements in which he told how he came from a working class neighborhood “twelve miles from Princeton,” finding there “very privileged people behaving irresponsibly.”
In the 1960, when he was at Princeton, and wanted to enter ROTC, the university abolished the program because it was all about that spoiled brat and privileged generation of students from elitist families that knew nothing about hardship, had little respect for authority, and drifted into self-indulgent crusading causes.
They became “the true believers” that Eric Hoffer has written about, the ambulance chaser mentalities that were always bent on saving the poor, the blacks, the disadvantaged and the underclass from themselves by attacking government, authority wherever they found it, and of course, their own university for not being attentive to their selective agenda, because to their mind it was, “all about them!”
It was in the 1950s that I was at the University of Iowa, what “Life” magazine at the time said was “definitely not for the sophisticated.” It was also a time of hysteria with the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism in play; when the Un-American Activities Committee was looking into people’s lives, and when “loyalty oaths” were required of teachers, writers, artists, and scientists.
Having read recently, “The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism” (2005) by Hayes Johnson, I wonder now if I am experiencing déjà vu, where the bigger the power vacuum the more ludicrous the attack.
Senator McCarthy played on American fears and angers with totally trumped up charges of Communists in the State Department, media and entertainment industry, claiming with little opposition that the nation was “rife with fellow travelers.” None of it proved true, while virtually all of his so-called “lists of communists in government” were found bogus. Yet, he managed to intimidate a generation of leaders into cowering to the lowest common denominator in the American psyche.
It is now a global issue. A colleague of the Korean scientist, who submitted phony stem cell research, becoming a national and international hero, observed, “Hwang Woo-suk wanted to be treated like a rock star.” In other words, he believed it was all about him. “We scientists,” the colleague continued, “find our satisfaction in the work we perform, and the little mysteries we solve along the way.”
There is certain sadness I feel in reflecting on the behavior of senators Kennedy and Bidden in these hearings. I once thought them the class of the senate in terms of hard work and passionate dedication to the people’s business. Now, I fear I see what they are actually made of.
My wonder is how could such men be for blacks, women's rights, and the disadvantaged and not be civil to this man? I was ashamed for them, but not so for Judge Samuel Alito. Whether he is confirmed or not, this was his finest hour. He makes me proud of my lower middle class background, which has allowed me in a humble way to realize something of the American dream. I wish him well, and God speed.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
See Dr. Fisher’s website: www.peripateticphilosopher.com. He writes about leadership issues in his books and articles, many of which are available on his blog.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
“What comes through (watching the senate confirmation hearing on Judge Sam Alito for the Supreme Court of the United States) is that it is not all about him.”
David Brooks, Columnist, New York Times
On the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (January 13, 2006)
Watching the senate confirmation hearings on Judge Samuel Alito sent shudders through me for the lack of civility shown the man by some senators. Obviously, this bipartisan panel of senators has a duty to screen nominees to the Supreme Court. But this doesn’t give them the right to badger the person in reckless abandon before the television cameras for special interest groups.
Often, I had to move from the television my stomach tied in knots wondering how anyone could take such abuse. I was one with his wife when she rose in tears one day and left the senate chamber.
When my wife came home from work, she asked me, “How did it go today?” I shook my head. “It didn’t,” I said, adding with a touch of remorse, "it's a wonder we get anyone to run for this high court.” Clearly, Judge Alito proved more gifted than this panel, which instead embarrassed itself as well as the nation with its inane savagery.
It was tantamount to psychological abuse bordering on torture. Yes, I said torture!
It is probably clear at this point that I identified with the judge. He came out of a working class family and neighborhood, as I did, and rose to these heady heights because he believed in the work ethic, respect for authority, to be all you can be, and to pursue the American dream by paying attention to detail, practicing fairness, and being guided by a set of principles that give expression to your integrity, and concern for the rights of your fellowman. He has had a rewarding and useful life for the attention.
His strength and the reason he was unflagging in his patience comes from what columnist David Brook refers to as, “It is not all about me!” Some reporters described Judge Alito as not being as cultured or sophisticated as John Roberts, the last nominee. and now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Perhaps these comments were a reaction to his opening statements in which he told how he came from a working class neighborhood “twelve miles from Princeton,” finding there “very privileged people behaving irresponsibly.”
In the 1960, when he was at Princeton, and wanted to enter ROTC, the university abolished the program because it was all about that spoiled brat and privileged generation of students from elitist families that knew nothing about hardship, had little respect for authority, and drifted into self-indulgent crusading causes.
They became “the true believers” that Eric Hoffer has written about, the ambulance chaser mentalities that were always bent on saving the poor, the blacks, the disadvantaged and the underclass from themselves by attacking government, authority wherever they found it, and of course, their own university for not being attentive to their selective agenda, because to their mind it was, “all about them!”
It was in the 1950s that I was at the University of Iowa, what “Life” magazine at the time said was “definitely not for the sophisticated.” It was also a time of hysteria with the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism in play; when the Un-American Activities Committee was looking into people’s lives, and when “loyalty oaths” were required of teachers, writers, artists, and scientists.
Having read recently, “The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism” (2005) by Hayes Johnson, I wonder now if I am experiencing déjà vu, where the bigger the power vacuum the more ludicrous the attack.
Senator McCarthy played on American fears and angers with totally trumped up charges of Communists in the State Department, media and entertainment industry, claiming with little opposition that the nation was “rife with fellow travelers.” None of it proved true, while virtually all of his so-called “lists of communists in government” were found bogus. Yet, he managed to intimidate a generation of leaders into cowering to the lowest common denominator in the American psyche.
It is now a global issue. A colleague of the Korean scientist, who submitted phony stem cell research, becoming a national and international hero, observed, “Hwang Woo-suk wanted to be treated like a rock star.” In other words, he believed it was all about him. “We scientists,” the colleague continued, “find our satisfaction in the work we perform, and the little mysteries we solve along the way.”
There is certain sadness I feel in reflecting on the behavior of senators Kennedy and Bidden in these hearings. I once thought them the class of the senate in terms of hard work and passionate dedication to the people’s business. Now, I fear I see what they are actually made of.
My wonder is how could such men be for blacks, women's rights, and the disadvantaged and not be civil to this man? I was ashamed for them, but not so for Judge Samuel Alito. Whether he is confirmed or not, this was his finest hour. He makes me proud of my lower middle class background, which has allowed me in a humble way to realize something of the American dream. I wish him well, and God speed.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
See Dr. Fisher’s website: www.peripateticphilosopher.com. He writes about leadership issues in his books and articles, many of which are available on his blog.
Monday, January 09, 2006
WHAT IS MY DREAM TRYING TO TELL ME?
WHAT IS MY DREAM TRYING TO TELL ME?
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
Freud made a point about "slips of tongue" showing the subconscious coming through at the most inopportune times. He also made a point that dreams often are the subconscious trying to get some kind of response from the conscious mind, or else the buried self, trying to tell the conscious mind to "get real." In any case, I had this dream I will share with you now.
I am driving along in my car listening to "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio, when the actor Jon Voight, whom I have been told I resembled at an earlier age, is interviewing the author of a new book, which has created a national sensation.
The book is called GROW UP PEOPLE! GET REAL SOCIETY! It is written by a physician named Dr. Sven Swisher (which sounds strangely like "Dr. Jim Fisher" out of Voight's mouth), who lost his wife the past year, and in bitterness and anger penned this book.
Dr. Swisher did so by first interviewing friends, acquaintances and strangers in New York City, where he lives on Park Avenue off of Central Park.
Voight informs the listeners that the book is "Number Six" on the New York Times bestseller list, and that Swisher has received a main selection of the Book of the Month Club with a check for $250,000, a check from The Reader's Digest for a condensed version of the book for $50,000, and the book is in its third printing having sold more than 100,000 hard bound copies to date.
The book described is hauntingly similar to my WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE? The more I hear of the book in the interview the more my heart sinks.
I arrive home and my phone is buzzing, which I never answer, with fourteen messages of congratulations on my "new success." I have forty-eight email messages of the same character. All of this makes me sink deep into my chair in a catatonic state of depression. Finally, I get the gumption to erase all the messages, and wait for Beautiful Betty to come home. When she does, I say, "Honey, I'm not going to write anymore?"
She looks at me, hangs up her coat, takes off her watch and earrings and says, "If I believe that, the sky would be black with flying pigs."
Then I tell her the dream. She listens and says nothing.
"Well?" I asked finally.
"Well, what?" she replies now slipping out of her clothes and getting into her leisure jump suit. We are now in the bedroom and I'm sitting on the bed watching her for reaction.
"Well, what do you think?"
She smiles now. "Somewhere in that question is, what do you want me to think?"
"Well?"
"Well, nothing. The world won't come to an end if you don't write. And you don't have to be Freud to know that. What you think your dream is telling you it is not telling you at all."
"Pardon me, my dear, but I didn't know you had a doctorate in psychology. I thought you were a bean counter."
Obviously, not offended, she replies, "Exactly, that is a bean counter analysis. You asked for it. That's it!"
"But you're not concerned if I don't write anymore?"
She doesn't answer. "Well?" I insist.
"My dear puzzled husband, you've got issues." I squirm. She continues. "You're a novelist who is trying to save the world from itself, and the world is not interested in being saved. It is interested in being entertained. I'm sure your namesake.."
"He's not my namesake. His name is Sven Swisher, Dr. Sven Swisher."
"Whatever. Now can I finish my thought before I forget it?"
"Of course, I'm a good listener."
She shakes her head in disbelief. "What I was going to say is that without reading this new book I'll bet dollars to doughnuts it is about 98 percent entertainment and 2 percent punishing criticism of its readers. Your book is the exact reverse of this."
I ponder this a moment, then answer, "I think you're right, but why am I like that?"
"Only God and that little gremlin in you know the answer. Write or don't write, do what you're always telling us to do, choose. Now, let me go. I've got to make dinner."
With that she taps me on the cheek, and leaves me sitting on the bed Buddha style, a little boy in an old man's body, wondering why she has all the wisdom in this household.
Be always well,
Jim
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologist who continues to write despite his gremlins.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
Freud made a point about "slips of tongue" showing the subconscious coming through at the most inopportune times. He also made a point that dreams often are the subconscious trying to get some kind of response from the conscious mind, or else the buried self, trying to tell the conscious mind to "get real." In any case, I had this dream I will share with you now.
I am driving along in my car listening to "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio, when the actor Jon Voight, whom I have been told I resembled at an earlier age, is interviewing the author of a new book, which has created a national sensation.
The book is called GROW UP PEOPLE! GET REAL SOCIETY! It is written by a physician named Dr. Sven Swisher (which sounds strangely like "Dr. Jim Fisher" out of Voight's mouth), who lost his wife the past year, and in bitterness and anger penned this book.
Dr. Swisher did so by first interviewing friends, acquaintances and strangers in New York City, where he lives on Park Avenue off of Central Park.
Voight informs the listeners that the book is "Number Six" on the New York Times bestseller list, and that Swisher has received a main selection of the Book of the Month Club with a check for $250,000, a check from The Reader's Digest for a condensed version of the book for $50,000, and the book is in its third printing having sold more than 100,000 hard bound copies to date.
The book described is hauntingly similar to my WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE? The more I hear of the book in the interview the more my heart sinks.
I arrive home and my phone is buzzing, which I never answer, with fourteen messages of congratulations on my "new success." I have forty-eight email messages of the same character. All of this makes me sink deep into my chair in a catatonic state of depression. Finally, I get the gumption to erase all the messages, and wait for Beautiful Betty to come home. When she does, I say, "Honey, I'm not going to write anymore?"
She looks at me, hangs up her coat, takes off her watch and earrings and says, "If I believe that, the sky would be black with flying pigs."
Then I tell her the dream. She listens and says nothing.
"Well?" I asked finally.
"Well, what?" she replies now slipping out of her clothes and getting into her leisure jump suit. We are now in the bedroom and I'm sitting on the bed watching her for reaction.
"Well, what do you think?"
She smiles now. "Somewhere in that question is, what do you want me to think?"
"Well?"
"Well, nothing. The world won't come to an end if you don't write. And you don't have to be Freud to know that. What you think your dream is telling you it is not telling you at all."
"Pardon me, my dear, but I didn't know you had a doctorate in psychology. I thought you were a bean counter."
Obviously, not offended, she replies, "Exactly, that is a bean counter analysis. You asked for it. That's it!"
"But you're not concerned if I don't write anymore?"
She doesn't answer. "Well?" I insist.
"My dear puzzled husband, you've got issues." I squirm. She continues. "You're a novelist who is trying to save the world from itself, and the world is not interested in being saved. It is interested in being entertained. I'm sure your namesake.."
"He's not my namesake. His name is Sven Swisher, Dr. Sven Swisher."
"Whatever. Now can I finish my thought before I forget it?"
"Of course, I'm a good listener."
She shakes her head in disbelief. "What I was going to say is that without reading this new book I'll bet dollars to doughnuts it is about 98 percent entertainment and 2 percent punishing criticism of its readers. Your book is the exact reverse of this."
I ponder this a moment, then answer, "I think you're right, but why am I like that?"
"Only God and that little gremlin in you know the answer. Write or don't write, do what you're always telling us to do, choose. Now, let me go. I've got to make dinner."
With that she taps me on the cheek, and leaves me sitting on the bed Buddha style, a little boy in an old man's body, wondering why she has all the wisdom in this household.
Be always well,
Jim
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologist who continues to write despite his gremlins.
Friday, January 06, 2006
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, AND THE YOU HE IS WATCHING IS NOT THE SAME YOU THAT YOU WERE!
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, AND THE YOU HE IS WATCHING IS NOT THE SAME YOU THAT YOU WERE!
JAMES R. FISHER, JR., PH.D.
© DECEMBER 2005
PART ONE
Wise distrust and constant watchfulness are the parents of safety. A soul without watchfulness is, like a city without walls, exposed to the inroads of all its enemies.
William Secker (1650)
English clergyman
THE QUIET MIND
The Indian philosopher and mystical thinker, Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986), born in Madras, India, and discovered by Dr. Annie Besant, resisted her attempts to proclaim him the Messiah. The wealthy London theosophist aimed to build a religion around him. Instead, he traveled the world advocating a way of life and thought unconditioned by the narrowness of nationality, race and religion.
Early on, Krisnamurti recognized the “divided self” was endemic to modern man, making him vulnerable to such thinkers as Freud and Jung. Western man in particular, he noted, has come to accept the eccentricities and neuroses described by these men as belonging to him. Thus, Freudian and Jungian language has come to identify modern man’s fears and anxieties. Krisnamurti insists this has made him more anxious and confused rather than less so.
To demonstrate his point, Krisnamurti often uses parables. This is one. There was this painter that would come to the crevice of a mountain where a large tree grew out of the divide. He would set up his easel, place his canvas on it, roll out his paints and rags, and observe the tree, sometimes for hours, but never set paintbrush to canvas.
A man who had observed this unusual behavior several times, one day asked, “Sir, are you a painter?”
The painter nodded, “That I am.”
“Yet you do not paint. I have watched you these several days, and not once have you touched your canvas with paintbrush. Am I correct?”
“Indeed, you are.”
“Help me, sir, understand this as I am quite confused.”
“I am not ready to paint. When I am ready, I shall paint the tree.”
“When you are ready?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon me for my boldness, but when might that be?”
“When I become the tree and the tree becomes me.” Seeing that this further confused his interrogator, he added. “I am not yet ready because I am still the observer and the tree is being observed. When there is no subject, and no object, only the tree, when we are wed as one, I shall paint.” With that he collapsed his easel, restored his paints to his case and left without another word.
THE ANXIOUS MIND
We like other people to do our thinking because we find ourselves too busy to do our own. We let them dictate the agenda of our lives so that we can complain if it is neither wanted nor expected. When asked what we would do with our lives if we didn’t have to work, we are apt to reply, nothing or travel, bookends to a vegetated state.
Most of us wouldn’t have any idea what to do with ourselves if we didn’t have our miseries and boring work. The simple fact is we let life make choices for us and then sit around and wait to see how those choices turn out.
The only commodity we own is time, and it is slipping away as I write these words. It has taken me a lifetime to realize I came in with nothing, and I will leave with nothing. Chasing possessions is a poor way to spend the short time in between.
The second thing I’ve learned is that it is much better to limit my desires than to earn the income to satisfy what Madison Avenue romanticizes as what I need. Most Americans are slaves to appetites invented by advertisers, Hollywood, and television programming. We dress, talk, eat, drink, drive, and couple according to dictums of what is “in” and what is “out.”
The United States of America is called an “individualistic society,” when it is hardly individualistic at all. Take renegades. In my youth, rebels on motorcycles were about the only ones with tattoos. Now tattoos are “in,” and so everyone has to have one. Renegade identity in this instance has neutralized individualism, as there seems almost a frantic fear of not being accepted or belonging to some crowd. As a consequence, the contemporary mind is anxious, and identity inauthentic, for no one wants to stand out as different in a crowd. Most attention, then, is spent on “fitting in” and watching others to see if they are watching us.
When we run into walls the walls we run into are often the walls that our unconscious personality has created, or the walls that others tell us are there. We accept their words because they are respected, expert and authority voices, or voices outside the voice that is in our heads waiting to be listened to, but unlikely to go unheard.
Experts talk of a “glass ceiling” for women seeking careers, and many women would argue it is hardly glass or invisible, but solid impenetrable steel.
This expression of “glass ceiling” came out of the experiment with flies. An aerated container with a glass ceiling watched the behavior of the entrapped flies. Many would bounce off the glass ceiling and return to buzz around the chamber. After some time, the glass lid was removed, only to find the flies were no longer interested in challenging the clear passage to freedom, buzzing about in anxious captivity.
There are similar captivities of choice that are even more remarkable.
Recently, I had dinner with a successful man who is in his forties, who confided to me that he has over a million dollars of capital, not including his real estate holdings. He also proudly informed me that he carries nearly $50,000 in his checking account, and dreams of the day when he will have $4 or 5 million saved so that he can quit a job that he doesn’t particularly like.
“Why not $40 or 50 million?” I asked.
He looked at me oddly, causing me to add, “What would you do when you no longer had to work 70 or 80 hours a week?”
“Nothing,” he answered without hesitation, and then after a moment’s pause, “I’d do some traveling.” Apparently, thinking this too self-serving, added, “I’d of course provide for the education of my kids and grandkids.”
It was clear that while his financial goals were thought out his emotional and psychological goals were not, drifting instead into inanities. Nor had the thought occurred to him what he would do with a 70 or 80 hours gap in his weekly life.
After I left him, I felt a deep sorrow bordering on revulsion, not for him so much, as for the fact that he was in the upper one-tenth of one percent of American earners and he wasn’t aware that he was being programmed, manipulated, and watched like a puppet on a string being pulled and danced to puppeteer refrains while life was draining from him.
LIFE AS PUPPETRY
There are two aspects of this condition that I would like to cover briefly. One is the psychology of the cult leader that controls all our lives whether we know it or not, more so now than ever before. We have become dependent for most of our information and the decisions we make, not out of direct experience, but on the basis of what cult leaders and their acolytes insist are right for us.
Cult leaders constantly bombard our senses telling us what is important, and what is not; what we should think and feel and why; and what makes us anxious and what will make it all go away. They even create their own financial fortunes by telling us how to create ours. Cult leaders have decided what ails us providing trendy ideal type models, when all they are doing is explaining away their own hang ups.
The second aspect is the mentor’s personality in which rests the cult leader’s power. This comes in diverse shapes but its presence is unmistakable. The bearded, smiling, Buddha-like Andrew Weil (Healthy Aging) has it, as did the handsome Werner Erhard (est seminars) of another generation, as does the baldheaded Wayne Dyer (Becoming Spiritual), who is a constant presence on public television. They, and their legion urge us to practice a veritable religion of the self in which the individual determines his own behavior without needing the approval of an outside force, which is ironic, because they certainly are not a force from within.
What makes mentoring personalities dangerous is that they promote the illusion that our conscious and unconscious minds are on different playing fields that must me netted together with their guidance. They know cognitive processes are perceived to have a corresponding weaker hold on the more dominant unconscious processes. That is, reason is more pliable than gut intelligence, and so they dwell on our vanities.
G. K. Chesterton put it well when he said, “That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.”
George Bernard Shaw said it even more pungently, “God created us in his image, and we decided to return the favor.”
Weil knows that we fear death and are afraid to live; Erhard knew Generation X considered responsibility a prison and so he provided a solution; and Dyer talks in simple terms about complex ideas giving his audience pabulum philosophy to save them the trouble of working things out for themselves.
CHARISMA UNCOVERED
Charisma, as a psychological emanation, may be thought of as a supplement to personality or leadership characteristics that fills most easily the emptiness of another person’s psyche, especially those created by boredom, too much time on one's hands, depression bordering on self-pity, developmental deficits due to sloth, or simply self-indulgence.
Charisma, through its power to over stimulate in the short term, can effectively mask the narcissistically seductive and self-serving aims that are often blatantly evident in the charismatic personality of the cult leader.
A collusive bargain is struck between the cult leader-as-mentor and the individual who is seductively charmed. This person perhaps has come to think: Okay, maybe I am being manipulated, maybe it is just a bunch of hogwash, but it feels so good it’s worth it! Such people buy the books and pay the hundreds of dollars for the seminars, and go away happy, but never changed.
The mentoring personality-as-cult leader knows his audience and the nature of his seductive appeal. If for only a brief respite from the dog-eat-dog world, the receptive personality wants to feel special, wants somebody to pay attention to him and his needs, as well as his fears, dilemmas, and anxieties. He reasons that he is spending time and money in pursuit of his object, self-approval, concluding, even if I am being used, he (cult leader) wouldn’t be wasting his time on me, important as he is, since he could be anywhere with anyone else, but he is here with me.
The fatal flaw in this chain of reasoning is that no one is less discriminating than the cult leader. He must have an audience, and experienced confirmation of the merits of his ideas. Charisma, then, far from being selective, is a promiscuous engagement cloaked in the addictive power of an idea, be it in blissful long life, hedonism without responsibility, or spirituality without struggle.
There is a hidden agenda of denying a covert deadness and passivity of both the cult leader and his audience by consummating an ephemeral relationship that, while meaningless in terms of change, is however exciting in the moment.
Young people reading this may see the concern raised here as hyperbolic and irrelevant. They of course did not live in the time of Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin, or indeed, Joseph McCarthy. Hitler and Stalin took Germany and Russia into war and ran it with the newspeak right out of George Orwell’s “1984” in which Big Brother proclaimed, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” Joseph McCarthy, on the other hand, was a rabble-rouser who played on the suspicious mind.
Orwell’s novel reflected precisely what these cult leaders were successful in establishing: palpable fear. Big Brother now is not less toxic, but comes to us more indirectly through subliminal stimulation in blind messages in film, television, music, and radio, while the constant eye of electronic surveillance invades our privacy. In “1984” newspeak, “personal privacy is self-imprisonment.” There is evidence this is accepted today without a whimper of protest. Big Brother is not only in our lives but has successfully changed our lives to a way in which we are not only alienated from what we were but self-hating for the attention.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CULT LEADER
We have this idea that charisma is important in leadership, when it is a manifestation of the puppeteer doing his thing. The cult leader first is a wounded human being who denies there is a connection between the idiosyncratic details of his actual deficit world and the utopian worldview he espouses.
Read biographies of Freud and Jung and you see how they became the cult craving figures that they are. They broke from each other: Freud succeeding with transactional analysis although it could not be scientifically replicated in experience, selling it successfully as “the new science” of psychology; while Jung reached down into cultural mythology and the collective unconscious to explain why man behaves as he does.
Both Freud and Jung, among others, have proven to be failures of great consequence in their appointed tasks, yet society calls them “great men” because society needs great men to believe itself in turn great for having followed their misguided leads.
It is not fair to single out these two men, alone, but this is a short piece, leaving educators, religious leaders, politicians, and others, who display similar behavior unrecorded.
In any case, it is part of the grandiose scheme of cult leaders to believe they transcend their personal deficits in the service of society’s collective unconscious, which puts them closer to Jung than to Freud.
The fact is that cult leaders, whatever their discipline or audience, suffer from a pathology of symbolism.
They see themselves, literally, as the symbols incarnate on a symbolic quest to do for people what they would not do for themselves. They carry the banner of liberty, equality and fraternity, or salvation, or the means to eternal bliss.
Cult leaders are analogous to schizophrenics, which I will subsequently address relative to “Big Brother.” I say this because of the loosened associations engendered in the meaning of words and ideas when the cult leader talks about such things. They are prone to a pathological spreading of cult symbolism. They do this when they focus on our fears, and attempt to persuade us to relax our freedoms to ensure our security. Symbolism, thus, becomes more real than experience and dictates behavior.
They use fear-speak as a suitable mechanism in defense of fear and gauge of their charismatic personality to project their identity with our concerns and how they plan to address them in our behalf. Thus, a single calamity can provide the pathology of symbolism to ride them to controlling our destiny, surrendering self-responsibility and freedom to them with open hands.
With this mechanism cult leaders can deny every scintilla of neurotic conflict, and project this onto society as its own deficit, thus externalizing an unbearable inner tension into a collective paranoia, creating an “us against them” mentality that we assume that belongs to us as well. Whatever they say we should do, we will do because we have not taken the trouble to reflect on what is going on.
Just when the cult leader’s magic is waning, he frequently admits to having failings, the Achilles heel of the great man, because the failings he admits to are always petty.
The cult leader sees himself as a historic figure with an opportunity to write the history of his times by acting as the great rebel, messenger of cultural salvation, or messianic genius matched with the demands of the times. No country or society is without such men.
This genius of cult leader has little to do with intelligence or intellectual acumen, in his mind, preferring to believe that mystical powers beyond his comprehension guides him to do the public’s good, and thus brings to birth a latent but expectant historical trend. Rules do not apply to such men, or rather existing rules, as they can be temporarily suspended to realize the greater good.
This profile could go on, but this is enough to visualize the aspect, realizing the cult leader cannot understand or accept without some devious maneuvering when he encounters sensitive observers who fail to be influenced by the weightiness of his mission, or how it is meant for them as well.
The disenchanted or opposition then become the dangerous and their names are added to some type of enemies list, when their greatest sin is that they failed to buy into the charade.
CULT LEADERS IN THE HOME AND THE DANGERS THEY REFLECT
Much as cult leaders can be upsetting to our lives if we allow them to become influences, a greater danger is the result of what happens when a mundane society buys into many of the constrains that are self-imposed.
A daughter does this when her mother dies at a young age, and she finds herself the servant of her brothers and sisters, and even father long after they should care for themselves. Her life is on hold until there is no longer any life left to hold onto. She does it first out of love, then obligation, then out of knowing nothing else, and then finally out of bitterness, never having had the courage to say, “Enough already!”
A wife does this when her husband keeps getting her pregnant and then drinks and gambles and runs around freely leaving her home to serve the needs of the children, and his needs, with no opportunity to know much less meet hers. She, too, should say enough already, and demand change, divorce, and if that is not likely, to leave.
A man in a job that he hates but pays him well and therefore claims he has no choice is a man who is servant to a master other than himself.
There are three types of people who live in this prosaic danger zone: there are the takers, those who play it safe, and those that never get enough.
The takers are like the husband described above who lives in reckless abandon treating his wife and children as possessions to do with as he pleases. Those who play it safe are what we call “normal,” or people who live, or try to live, within their means and possibilities while wearing blinders to what is happening around them. Then there are those who live constantly on the edge in reckless abandon treating everything they encounter as fodder for their grand design. (See PART TWO)
Inward life was stolen from the daughter who took care of her brothers and father at the expense of her own. The inward life was stolen by the wife that subjugated her needs to the voice of demands of her husband and society “to be a good mother and wife,” whatever the cost. And the inward life was stolen from the man who never found the gumption to do what he really wanted to do.
PERSONALITY PROFILE OF THE CULT LEADERS AMONGST US
The radiance of charisma can be deceptive. The action of charisma may be a deflection and transformation of inner energy to glow and radiate outward into lines of force.
Seen in this way, it represents almost a manic projection, which may explain why manic attacks and bizarre reactions of hysteria are manifestations of charisma.
Yet, the charismatic personality may be no more than the forceful symptom of the psychic work that is necessary for transforming inner affects to outer effects, and therefore may not be so free flowing as it would seem.
There is an obvious connection between this mesmerizing power and the sleight-of-hand tricks of the magician in that the charismatic leader conceals the struggle that was required to produce the effect. Have no doubt that Freud, Jung, Weil, Erhard, Dyer, and many others of their charismatic persuasion have had their struggles. What they have “found out” they desire to share with the happy ease and simmering aplomb of effortless discovery. What is missing is how hard the charismatic personality works at being charismatic.
To understand why charisma works as well as it does, given its duplicitous nature, it must be understood that we are a “divided self” in which subject and object are separated by a convenient miasma. The charismatic personality penetrates this mist with narcissistic giving, by acting as though he is giving something that is not already possessed, and giving it grandiosely. The charismatic personality deflects the awareness of the recipient (who is being given little or nothing) from the actual frustrating present transaction to stimulate the promise of extravagant gratification in the future by appealing to natural greed and sloth.
You experience the flavor of this when the narcissistic appeal is that your weaknesses are actually your strengths, that selfishness is not a curse but a blessing, that greed is good, that workaholism is good for the soul. You get the point. It follows that the charismatic personality, who is obsessed with his impact on the recipient, will not fail to use the full power of his narcissistic giving to penetrate the fragile mind of the devotee.
The influence of charisma is awesome to those predisposed to it. Its effects can best be described with those of a drug. Charisma can often function as a euphoria-building, antidepressant drug. In its ability to make one feel good, charisma can seem a high, and part of the addiction. There is no place for reason, for fair exchange, or for humor as the line has been drawn and the charismatic addicted person cannot imagine crossing it.
There is some truth that we are attracted to what we are not and believe we should be, which makes us vulnerable to charismatic personalities with these apparent qualities:
· They have a significant aura of greater energetic drive than we do, which does not follow from an excess of cheerfulness, but may be an expression of an angry disposition, as is often the case with incendiary leaders of minority groups.
· They seem to have a sense of psychic surplus, which overflows and they wish to share with you.
· Close observation will reveal they are narcissistically self-absorbed believing themselves to understand the profound and to be driven by greater good.
· They have the ability to draw people to them by the psychic force of their personality, which sets up a force field magnetism not unlike iron filings to a magnet.
· This force field is their “promised land” which they are willing to share.
There is a connection between charisma and seduction, and in the prosaic sense, many a person has fallen victim to this fatal charm, often to his or her regret. The charismatic personality is energetic, charming and alive, and sets off goose bumps in you, failing to realize he is always talking about himself, resulting in your not being able to resist the charm of such a know-it-all, upbeat, and heavenly person, who sweeps you off your feet before you know it.
Likely to be missed in this heated climate is that the charismatic personality is obsessed not to be simply a “self,” but a personality, to be not larger than life, but larger than himself.
The charismatic personality strikes us as an embodiment of an archetype, more beautiful or handsome than is possible, more athletic and successful under pressure than is imaginable, more charming and knowledgeable than anyone could remotely attain. In a word, the charismatic personality is on another level, a paradigm of some elemental human force that connects him with the primitive and unconscious depths of our being.
We are in awe and think we have found our leader, our true love, or the answer to our prayers. So, we leave our wits behind and follow blindly leaving the sanctuary of our safe harbor and its moorings where good sense and security once resided.
It should be clear, then, that whatever the charismatic personality offers, be it whatever, it is not love, kindness, understanding, nurturance, empathy, or intimacy in any fundamental human sense. Should there be the promise of enlightenment and guidance, whether religious, political, philosophical, moral, or aesthetic, rest assured it will be delivered grandiosely, but never in a personal way. The charismatic personality abhors the one-on-one setting for reason. It exposes him as fraud.
So, it is not necessarily that face seen on television that is your charismatic personality of concern, but may be that face across the room on the couch in the living room, in a bar having a drink beside a stranger, at a conference of peers, or in coffee shop having a cafe au lait with a colleague who is married to your best friend.
We are most vulnerable to the charismatic personality, when our guard is down and he or she pursues a hidden agenda with indirection and sleight-of-hand finesse when our vanity and sincerity collide to not recognize the invasion.
SOMEBODY IS WATCHING AND THE WATCHER MAY BE UP TO NO GOOD
We are constantly reminded of identity theft. Mystery novelists use this as fodder for their stories. It illustrates another point. We believe bad things only happen to other people, and so we throw caution to the wind, and behave as if we can’t be touched.
The predator in a David Baldacci novel studies automobiles, their age, type, condition, and license plate numbers. He sees a vanity plate, which reads “DEH JD,” and knows the person is a lawyer. She goes to an ATM, and then throws the receipt into the trash. He retrieves it and has more information. He looks her up and gets her phone number, and so on. He does this for a number of potential victims with them all seemingly oblivious to danger leaving information in plain sight. For example, he sees a People magazine with the name and address of the person on the seat of a locked car. From there, he can go to the Internet and get all the information he needs. Paranoia, as a consequence, has become common defense.
It wasn’t like this when I was a boy. That all changed, according to Haynes Johnson in his new book, “The Age of Anxiety” (2005), with the terror of the 1950s called “McCarthyism.” Joseph McCarthy was the junior US Senator from Wisconsin, who claimed there were scores of communist in the government and the media. He used his charismatic personality to stir up blind fear and anxiety into mass public hysteria, convincing the US Congress to create an “Un-American Activities Committee.” Thousands lost their jobs for writing words like you see here, as it was the “Great Red Scare,” which was Communism.
While this mania was sweeping across the nation, “1984” (1949) by George Orwell was being published. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm wrote an “after word” about it in 1961:
“George Orwell’s 1984 is the expression of a mood, and it is a warning. The mood it expresses is that of near despair about the future of man, and the warning is that unless the course of history changes, men all over the world will lose their most human qualities, will become soulless automatons, and will not even be aware of it.”
To give you a flavor of that novel and how it ties in with this piece, I conclude with a passage from “1984”:
“Crimstop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.” (1984, A Signet Classic Paperback, 1961, p. 175)
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Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologist and former corporate executive who writes on themes that touch his fancy from time to time. Many of these subsequently are published. See his website and blog: www.peripateticphilosopher.com.
JAMES R. FISHER, JR., PH.D.
© DECEMBER 2005
PART ONE
Wise distrust and constant watchfulness are the parents of safety. A soul without watchfulness is, like a city without walls, exposed to the inroads of all its enemies.
William Secker (1650)
English clergyman
THE QUIET MIND
The Indian philosopher and mystical thinker, Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986), born in Madras, India, and discovered by Dr. Annie Besant, resisted her attempts to proclaim him the Messiah. The wealthy London theosophist aimed to build a religion around him. Instead, he traveled the world advocating a way of life and thought unconditioned by the narrowness of nationality, race and religion.
Early on, Krisnamurti recognized the “divided self” was endemic to modern man, making him vulnerable to such thinkers as Freud and Jung. Western man in particular, he noted, has come to accept the eccentricities and neuroses described by these men as belonging to him. Thus, Freudian and Jungian language has come to identify modern man’s fears and anxieties. Krisnamurti insists this has made him more anxious and confused rather than less so.
To demonstrate his point, Krisnamurti often uses parables. This is one. There was this painter that would come to the crevice of a mountain where a large tree grew out of the divide. He would set up his easel, place his canvas on it, roll out his paints and rags, and observe the tree, sometimes for hours, but never set paintbrush to canvas.
A man who had observed this unusual behavior several times, one day asked, “Sir, are you a painter?”
The painter nodded, “That I am.”
“Yet you do not paint. I have watched you these several days, and not once have you touched your canvas with paintbrush. Am I correct?”
“Indeed, you are.”
“Help me, sir, understand this as I am quite confused.”
“I am not ready to paint. When I am ready, I shall paint the tree.”
“When you are ready?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon me for my boldness, but when might that be?”
“When I become the tree and the tree becomes me.” Seeing that this further confused his interrogator, he added. “I am not yet ready because I am still the observer and the tree is being observed. When there is no subject, and no object, only the tree, when we are wed as one, I shall paint.” With that he collapsed his easel, restored his paints to his case and left without another word.
THE ANXIOUS MIND
We like other people to do our thinking because we find ourselves too busy to do our own. We let them dictate the agenda of our lives so that we can complain if it is neither wanted nor expected. When asked what we would do with our lives if we didn’t have to work, we are apt to reply, nothing or travel, bookends to a vegetated state.
Most of us wouldn’t have any idea what to do with ourselves if we didn’t have our miseries and boring work. The simple fact is we let life make choices for us and then sit around and wait to see how those choices turn out.
The only commodity we own is time, and it is slipping away as I write these words. It has taken me a lifetime to realize I came in with nothing, and I will leave with nothing. Chasing possessions is a poor way to spend the short time in between.
The second thing I’ve learned is that it is much better to limit my desires than to earn the income to satisfy what Madison Avenue romanticizes as what I need. Most Americans are slaves to appetites invented by advertisers, Hollywood, and television programming. We dress, talk, eat, drink, drive, and couple according to dictums of what is “in” and what is “out.”
The United States of America is called an “individualistic society,” when it is hardly individualistic at all. Take renegades. In my youth, rebels on motorcycles were about the only ones with tattoos. Now tattoos are “in,” and so everyone has to have one. Renegade identity in this instance has neutralized individualism, as there seems almost a frantic fear of not being accepted or belonging to some crowd. As a consequence, the contemporary mind is anxious, and identity inauthentic, for no one wants to stand out as different in a crowd. Most attention, then, is spent on “fitting in” and watching others to see if they are watching us.
When we run into walls the walls we run into are often the walls that our unconscious personality has created, or the walls that others tell us are there. We accept their words because they are respected, expert and authority voices, or voices outside the voice that is in our heads waiting to be listened to, but unlikely to go unheard.
Experts talk of a “glass ceiling” for women seeking careers, and many women would argue it is hardly glass or invisible, but solid impenetrable steel.
This expression of “glass ceiling” came out of the experiment with flies. An aerated container with a glass ceiling watched the behavior of the entrapped flies. Many would bounce off the glass ceiling and return to buzz around the chamber. After some time, the glass lid was removed, only to find the flies were no longer interested in challenging the clear passage to freedom, buzzing about in anxious captivity.
There are similar captivities of choice that are even more remarkable.
Recently, I had dinner with a successful man who is in his forties, who confided to me that he has over a million dollars of capital, not including his real estate holdings. He also proudly informed me that he carries nearly $50,000 in his checking account, and dreams of the day when he will have $4 or 5 million saved so that he can quit a job that he doesn’t particularly like.
“Why not $40 or 50 million?” I asked.
He looked at me oddly, causing me to add, “What would you do when you no longer had to work 70 or 80 hours a week?”
“Nothing,” he answered without hesitation, and then after a moment’s pause, “I’d do some traveling.” Apparently, thinking this too self-serving, added, “I’d of course provide for the education of my kids and grandkids.”
It was clear that while his financial goals were thought out his emotional and psychological goals were not, drifting instead into inanities. Nor had the thought occurred to him what he would do with a 70 or 80 hours gap in his weekly life.
After I left him, I felt a deep sorrow bordering on revulsion, not for him so much, as for the fact that he was in the upper one-tenth of one percent of American earners and he wasn’t aware that he was being programmed, manipulated, and watched like a puppet on a string being pulled and danced to puppeteer refrains while life was draining from him.
LIFE AS PUPPETRY
There are two aspects of this condition that I would like to cover briefly. One is the psychology of the cult leader that controls all our lives whether we know it or not, more so now than ever before. We have become dependent for most of our information and the decisions we make, not out of direct experience, but on the basis of what cult leaders and their acolytes insist are right for us.
Cult leaders constantly bombard our senses telling us what is important, and what is not; what we should think and feel and why; and what makes us anxious and what will make it all go away. They even create their own financial fortunes by telling us how to create ours. Cult leaders have decided what ails us providing trendy ideal type models, when all they are doing is explaining away their own hang ups.
The second aspect is the mentor’s personality in which rests the cult leader’s power. This comes in diverse shapes but its presence is unmistakable. The bearded, smiling, Buddha-like Andrew Weil (Healthy Aging) has it, as did the handsome Werner Erhard (est seminars) of another generation, as does the baldheaded Wayne Dyer (Becoming Spiritual), who is a constant presence on public television. They, and their legion urge us to practice a veritable religion of the self in which the individual determines his own behavior without needing the approval of an outside force, which is ironic, because they certainly are not a force from within.
What makes mentoring personalities dangerous is that they promote the illusion that our conscious and unconscious minds are on different playing fields that must me netted together with their guidance. They know cognitive processes are perceived to have a corresponding weaker hold on the more dominant unconscious processes. That is, reason is more pliable than gut intelligence, and so they dwell on our vanities.
G. K. Chesterton put it well when he said, “That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.”
George Bernard Shaw said it even more pungently, “God created us in his image, and we decided to return the favor.”
Weil knows that we fear death and are afraid to live; Erhard knew Generation X considered responsibility a prison and so he provided a solution; and Dyer talks in simple terms about complex ideas giving his audience pabulum philosophy to save them the trouble of working things out for themselves.
CHARISMA UNCOVERED
Charisma, as a psychological emanation, may be thought of as a supplement to personality or leadership characteristics that fills most easily the emptiness of another person’s psyche, especially those created by boredom, too much time on one's hands, depression bordering on self-pity, developmental deficits due to sloth, or simply self-indulgence.
Charisma, through its power to over stimulate in the short term, can effectively mask the narcissistically seductive and self-serving aims that are often blatantly evident in the charismatic personality of the cult leader.
A collusive bargain is struck between the cult leader-as-mentor and the individual who is seductively charmed. This person perhaps has come to think: Okay, maybe I am being manipulated, maybe it is just a bunch of hogwash, but it feels so good it’s worth it! Such people buy the books and pay the hundreds of dollars for the seminars, and go away happy, but never changed.
The mentoring personality-as-cult leader knows his audience and the nature of his seductive appeal. If for only a brief respite from the dog-eat-dog world, the receptive personality wants to feel special, wants somebody to pay attention to him and his needs, as well as his fears, dilemmas, and anxieties. He reasons that he is spending time and money in pursuit of his object, self-approval, concluding, even if I am being used, he (cult leader) wouldn’t be wasting his time on me, important as he is, since he could be anywhere with anyone else, but he is here with me.
The fatal flaw in this chain of reasoning is that no one is less discriminating than the cult leader. He must have an audience, and experienced confirmation of the merits of his ideas. Charisma, then, far from being selective, is a promiscuous engagement cloaked in the addictive power of an idea, be it in blissful long life, hedonism without responsibility, or spirituality without struggle.
There is a hidden agenda of denying a covert deadness and passivity of both the cult leader and his audience by consummating an ephemeral relationship that, while meaningless in terms of change, is however exciting in the moment.
Young people reading this may see the concern raised here as hyperbolic and irrelevant. They of course did not live in the time of Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin, or indeed, Joseph McCarthy. Hitler and Stalin took Germany and Russia into war and ran it with the newspeak right out of George Orwell’s “1984” in which Big Brother proclaimed, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” Joseph McCarthy, on the other hand, was a rabble-rouser who played on the suspicious mind.
Orwell’s novel reflected precisely what these cult leaders were successful in establishing: palpable fear. Big Brother now is not less toxic, but comes to us more indirectly through subliminal stimulation in blind messages in film, television, music, and radio, while the constant eye of electronic surveillance invades our privacy. In “1984” newspeak, “personal privacy is self-imprisonment.” There is evidence this is accepted today without a whimper of protest. Big Brother is not only in our lives but has successfully changed our lives to a way in which we are not only alienated from what we were but self-hating for the attention.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CULT LEADER
We have this idea that charisma is important in leadership, when it is a manifestation of the puppeteer doing his thing. The cult leader first is a wounded human being who denies there is a connection between the idiosyncratic details of his actual deficit world and the utopian worldview he espouses.
Read biographies of Freud and Jung and you see how they became the cult craving figures that they are. They broke from each other: Freud succeeding with transactional analysis although it could not be scientifically replicated in experience, selling it successfully as “the new science” of psychology; while Jung reached down into cultural mythology and the collective unconscious to explain why man behaves as he does.
Both Freud and Jung, among others, have proven to be failures of great consequence in their appointed tasks, yet society calls them “great men” because society needs great men to believe itself in turn great for having followed their misguided leads.
It is not fair to single out these two men, alone, but this is a short piece, leaving educators, religious leaders, politicians, and others, who display similar behavior unrecorded.
In any case, it is part of the grandiose scheme of cult leaders to believe they transcend their personal deficits in the service of society’s collective unconscious, which puts them closer to Jung than to Freud.
The fact is that cult leaders, whatever their discipline or audience, suffer from a pathology of symbolism.
They see themselves, literally, as the symbols incarnate on a symbolic quest to do for people what they would not do for themselves. They carry the banner of liberty, equality and fraternity, or salvation, or the means to eternal bliss.
Cult leaders are analogous to schizophrenics, which I will subsequently address relative to “Big Brother.” I say this because of the loosened associations engendered in the meaning of words and ideas when the cult leader talks about such things. They are prone to a pathological spreading of cult symbolism. They do this when they focus on our fears, and attempt to persuade us to relax our freedoms to ensure our security. Symbolism, thus, becomes more real than experience and dictates behavior.
They use fear-speak as a suitable mechanism in defense of fear and gauge of their charismatic personality to project their identity with our concerns and how they plan to address them in our behalf. Thus, a single calamity can provide the pathology of symbolism to ride them to controlling our destiny, surrendering self-responsibility and freedom to them with open hands.
With this mechanism cult leaders can deny every scintilla of neurotic conflict, and project this onto society as its own deficit, thus externalizing an unbearable inner tension into a collective paranoia, creating an “us against them” mentality that we assume that belongs to us as well. Whatever they say we should do, we will do because we have not taken the trouble to reflect on what is going on.
Just when the cult leader’s magic is waning, he frequently admits to having failings, the Achilles heel of the great man, because the failings he admits to are always petty.
The cult leader sees himself as a historic figure with an opportunity to write the history of his times by acting as the great rebel, messenger of cultural salvation, or messianic genius matched with the demands of the times. No country or society is without such men.
This genius of cult leader has little to do with intelligence or intellectual acumen, in his mind, preferring to believe that mystical powers beyond his comprehension guides him to do the public’s good, and thus brings to birth a latent but expectant historical trend. Rules do not apply to such men, or rather existing rules, as they can be temporarily suspended to realize the greater good.
This profile could go on, but this is enough to visualize the aspect, realizing the cult leader cannot understand or accept without some devious maneuvering when he encounters sensitive observers who fail to be influenced by the weightiness of his mission, or how it is meant for them as well.
The disenchanted or opposition then become the dangerous and their names are added to some type of enemies list, when their greatest sin is that they failed to buy into the charade.
CULT LEADERS IN THE HOME AND THE DANGERS THEY REFLECT
Much as cult leaders can be upsetting to our lives if we allow them to become influences, a greater danger is the result of what happens when a mundane society buys into many of the constrains that are self-imposed.
A daughter does this when her mother dies at a young age, and she finds herself the servant of her brothers and sisters, and even father long after they should care for themselves. Her life is on hold until there is no longer any life left to hold onto. She does it first out of love, then obligation, then out of knowing nothing else, and then finally out of bitterness, never having had the courage to say, “Enough already!”
A wife does this when her husband keeps getting her pregnant and then drinks and gambles and runs around freely leaving her home to serve the needs of the children, and his needs, with no opportunity to know much less meet hers. She, too, should say enough already, and demand change, divorce, and if that is not likely, to leave.
A man in a job that he hates but pays him well and therefore claims he has no choice is a man who is servant to a master other than himself.
There are three types of people who live in this prosaic danger zone: there are the takers, those who play it safe, and those that never get enough.
The takers are like the husband described above who lives in reckless abandon treating his wife and children as possessions to do with as he pleases. Those who play it safe are what we call “normal,” or people who live, or try to live, within their means and possibilities while wearing blinders to what is happening around them. Then there are those who live constantly on the edge in reckless abandon treating everything they encounter as fodder for their grand design. (See PART TWO)
Inward life was stolen from the daughter who took care of her brothers and father at the expense of her own. The inward life was stolen by the wife that subjugated her needs to the voice of demands of her husband and society “to be a good mother and wife,” whatever the cost. And the inward life was stolen from the man who never found the gumption to do what he really wanted to do.
PERSONALITY PROFILE OF THE CULT LEADERS AMONGST US
The radiance of charisma can be deceptive. The action of charisma may be a deflection and transformation of inner energy to glow and radiate outward into lines of force.
Seen in this way, it represents almost a manic projection, which may explain why manic attacks and bizarre reactions of hysteria are manifestations of charisma.
Yet, the charismatic personality may be no more than the forceful symptom of the psychic work that is necessary for transforming inner affects to outer effects, and therefore may not be so free flowing as it would seem.
There is an obvious connection between this mesmerizing power and the sleight-of-hand tricks of the magician in that the charismatic leader conceals the struggle that was required to produce the effect. Have no doubt that Freud, Jung, Weil, Erhard, Dyer, and many others of their charismatic persuasion have had their struggles. What they have “found out” they desire to share with the happy ease and simmering aplomb of effortless discovery. What is missing is how hard the charismatic personality works at being charismatic.
To understand why charisma works as well as it does, given its duplicitous nature, it must be understood that we are a “divided self” in which subject and object are separated by a convenient miasma. The charismatic personality penetrates this mist with narcissistic giving, by acting as though he is giving something that is not already possessed, and giving it grandiosely. The charismatic personality deflects the awareness of the recipient (who is being given little or nothing) from the actual frustrating present transaction to stimulate the promise of extravagant gratification in the future by appealing to natural greed and sloth.
You experience the flavor of this when the narcissistic appeal is that your weaknesses are actually your strengths, that selfishness is not a curse but a blessing, that greed is good, that workaholism is good for the soul. You get the point. It follows that the charismatic personality, who is obsessed with his impact on the recipient, will not fail to use the full power of his narcissistic giving to penetrate the fragile mind of the devotee.
The influence of charisma is awesome to those predisposed to it. Its effects can best be described with those of a drug. Charisma can often function as a euphoria-building, antidepressant drug. In its ability to make one feel good, charisma can seem a high, and part of the addiction. There is no place for reason, for fair exchange, or for humor as the line has been drawn and the charismatic addicted person cannot imagine crossing it.
There is some truth that we are attracted to what we are not and believe we should be, which makes us vulnerable to charismatic personalities with these apparent qualities:
· They have a significant aura of greater energetic drive than we do, which does not follow from an excess of cheerfulness, but may be an expression of an angry disposition, as is often the case with incendiary leaders of minority groups.
· They seem to have a sense of psychic surplus, which overflows and they wish to share with you.
· Close observation will reveal they are narcissistically self-absorbed believing themselves to understand the profound and to be driven by greater good.
· They have the ability to draw people to them by the psychic force of their personality, which sets up a force field magnetism not unlike iron filings to a magnet.
· This force field is their “promised land” which they are willing to share.
There is a connection between charisma and seduction, and in the prosaic sense, many a person has fallen victim to this fatal charm, often to his or her regret. The charismatic personality is energetic, charming and alive, and sets off goose bumps in you, failing to realize he is always talking about himself, resulting in your not being able to resist the charm of such a know-it-all, upbeat, and heavenly person, who sweeps you off your feet before you know it.
Likely to be missed in this heated climate is that the charismatic personality is obsessed not to be simply a “self,” but a personality, to be not larger than life, but larger than himself.
The charismatic personality strikes us as an embodiment of an archetype, more beautiful or handsome than is possible, more athletic and successful under pressure than is imaginable, more charming and knowledgeable than anyone could remotely attain. In a word, the charismatic personality is on another level, a paradigm of some elemental human force that connects him with the primitive and unconscious depths of our being.
We are in awe and think we have found our leader, our true love, or the answer to our prayers. So, we leave our wits behind and follow blindly leaving the sanctuary of our safe harbor and its moorings where good sense and security once resided.
It should be clear, then, that whatever the charismatic personality offers, be it whatever, it is not love, kindness, understanding, nurturance, empathy, or intimacy in any fundamental human sense. Should there be the promise of enlightenment and guidance, whether religious, political, philosophical, moral, or aesthetic, rest assured it will be delivered grandiosely, but never in a personal way. The charismatic personality abhors the one-on-one setting for reason. It exposes him as fraud.
So, it is not necessarily that face seen on television that is your charismatic personality of concern, but may be that face across the room on the couch in the living room, in a bar having a drink beside a stranger, at a conference of peers, or in coffee shop having a cafe au lait with a colleague who is married to your best friend.
We are most vulnerable to the charismatic personality, when our guard is down and he or she pursues a hidden agenda with indirection and sleight-of-hand finesse when our vanity and sincerity collide to not recognize the invasion.
SOMEBODY IS WATCHING AND THE WATCHER MAY BE UP TO NO GOOD
We are constantly reminded of identity theft. Mystery novelists use this as fodder for their stories. It illustrates another point. We believe bad things only happen to other people, and so we throw caution to the wind, and behave as if we can’t be touched.
The predator in a David Baldacci novel studies automobiles, their age, type, condition, and license plate numbers. He sees a vanity plate, which reads “DEH JD,” and knows the person is a lawyer. She goes to an ATM, and then throws the receipt into the trash. He retrieves it and has more information. He looks her up and gets her phone number, and so on. He does this for a number of potential victims with them all seemingly oblivious to danger leaving information in plain sight. For example, he sees a People magazine with the name and address of the person on the seat of a locked car. From there, he can go to the Internet and get all the information he needs. Paranoia, as a consequence, has become common defense.
It wasn’t like this when I was a boy. That all changed, according to Haynes Johnson in his new book, “The Age of Anxiety” (2005), with the terror of the 1950s called “McCarthyism.” Joseph McCarthy was the junior US Senator from Wisconsin, who claimed there were scores of communist in the government and the media. He used his charismatic personality to stir up blind fear and anxiety into mass public hysteria, convincing the US Congress to create an “Un-American Activities Committee.” Thousands lost their jobs for writing words like you see here, as it was the “Great Red Scare,” which was Communism.
While this mania was sweeping across the nation, “1984” (1949) by George Orwell was being published. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm wrote an “after word” about it in 1961:
“George Orwell’s 1984 is the expression of a mood, and it is a warning. The mood it expresses is that of near despair about the future of man, and the warning is that unless the course of history changes, men all over the world will lose their most human qualities, will become soulless automatons, and will not even be aware of it.”
To give you a flavor of that novel and how it ties in with this piece, I conclude with a passage from “1984”:
“Crimstop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.” (1984, A Signet Classic Paperback, 1961, p. 175)
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Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologist and former corporate executive who writes on themes that touch his fancy from time to time. Many of these subsequently are published. See his website and blog: www.peripateticphilosopher.com.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, AND THE YOU HE IS WATCHING IS NOT THE SAME YOU THAT YOU WERE!
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, AND THE YOU HE IS WATCHING IS NOT THE SAME YOU THAT YOU WERE!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
Who controls the past controls the future
Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell (1902 – 1950)
Novel, 1984 (1949)
PART TWO
We have had a phenomenon in the recent past that defies explanation. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States has continued to climb impressively over the past decade or so, while the actual wages and benefits to workers has, during the same period, continued to decline.
Yet, there have been few protests, even less litigation and no mounted employee boycott or rebellion.
Nearly two decades ago, I reminded corporate America that its entitlement program was approaching $3 trillion dollars or equal to the then national debt, and accelerating. I pointed out that entitlements were driving companies to bankruptcy and were not tied to performance but were given across-the-board to everyone indiscriminately (see “Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches,” 1990). My book was considered an “angry book” and was discounted on that basis.
Repeatedly, I have written about “leaderless leadership,” outlining the pusillanimous and disastrous initiatives of human resources.
People have never been a long suit of corporate leadership. Corpocracy feels more comfortable in the management of things than in the leadership of people. It has been willing to abdicate this role to human resources throwing money at the problem rather than taking the reins to understand, appreciate and leverage a changing workforce to high performance. Human resources have made such a mess of things with a series of interventions transforming the workplace culture from comfort to complacency skipping contribution (see “Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge,” 1998).
Now, we find the American workforce quietly acquiescing to pay and benefit cuts as if they were the actual designers of this failed strategy. They were not. They are its victims. In the grand scheme of things, these workers have failed to participate in the economic boom, distracted by comfort and bribed with entitlements, benefits now being taken away from them. Even pension plans are going defunct. This situation defies understanding. While 85 percent of American workers have found their actual spending power reduced, the other 15 percent have found their good fortunes increasing by leaps and bounds. Something is wrong with this picture.
THE PAST IMPERFECT – THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE
The typical organization is represented by three kinds of people. There has been little movement or change between these categories with consequences yet to be felt. Internal stress and external demands are straining towards collapse and no one is paying attention.
“Foot Draggers”
Every organization has “foot draggers.” They represent 15 percent of the workforce and are considered “losers” or “takaholics.” They have little interest in the health of the organization and refuse to grow up.
Ambivalent leadership is inclined to vacillate between ensuring workers are management dependent or counter dependent on the organization, assuming the role of surrogate parents to these workers as dependent children. This is palpable in 50-year-old workers with the emotional maturity of 12-year-old obedient and passive children.
“Foot draggers” are self-indulgent and suspended in permanent adolescence. Driven by impulse and sensory gratification, they are the darlings of compulsive management that would save them when they are in fact unsalvageable. “Foot draggers” like to play the role of the martyr and there are always ambulance chaser managers bent on saving them from themselves.
“Followers”
“Followers” are appeasers that desire to play it safe and aim to please. They represent about 70 percent of the workforce. Descendents of workers of compulsory education where they learned the three r’s (reading, riting, rithmetic), they were groomed to run the machines of exploding factories in the early 20th century American economy. The subtle curriculum of this required education was training in discipline, obedience, punctuality, conformity, politeness, passivity, and submissiveness.
Stated otherwise, American education was never designed to provide an enriching intellectual and living experience for the majority where one could learn to appreciate the arts and the possibilities of leisure. Webster’s dictionary makes it brutally clear that education was designed to make a machine of man to do a job.
By no accident, then, public education created this monster and we are saddled with it now. Even our universities, which once escaped this stultifying confinement, have become factories producing professional workers to man technology. It should therefore come as no surprise that few American geniuses in matters of the heart were outstanding students: Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, to name a few.
“Followers” display moderation in all their actions. They are safe hires, seldom taking chances on or off the job, living within their means, never moving off the dime or displaying what they think or feel. It is not because they don’t think or feel. It is simply they are as much a stranger to themselves as everyone else.
“Followers” are a perfectly controlled species and demonstrate this disposition by being nearly inconspicuous to a fault.
“Hard Chargers”
The final 15 percent are the “hard chargers.” These “workaholics” think nothing of working 70 or 80 hours a week, while the cushion of their efforts is never great enough. They must have more, do more, and achieve more. If they have six-figure incomes, they must be millionaires. If they are millionaires, they must be multi-millionaires. It is not that money, per se, is important to them. It is as composer Billy Rose put it, how you measure up with the upper crust in America.
Work is a narcotic. Paradoxically, “hard chargers” mirror “foot draggers,” only to the opposite extreme. They both are compulsive; both driven toward reckless abandon; both inclined toward the dangerous with a feeling of invisibility; and both are governed by their own rules.
Whereas the “foot draggers” are out-of-control, “hard chargers” are obsessed with being in control. Both maintain individualized identities: “foot draggers” as victims and “hard chargers” as vanquishers. Incongruously, political “conservatives” are notable within both their ranks being equally inclined to be critics of the disadvantaged. Whereas “foot draggers” are predisposed to martyrdom, “hard chargers” are prone to grandstanding.
Both “foot draggers” and “hard chargers” are gamblers, but “foot draggers” always lose because they “have to win,” whereas “hard chargers” always win because they expect losing is part of the odds embraced to winning.
PRESENT RIDICULOUS – OPPORTUNITY AS COMPLIANCE, FREEDOM AS PRISON
A peculiar thing has happened which nobody seems to notice.
Take American autoworkers. They once enjoyed the same economic success (“As GM goes, so goes America!”), as most professionals, including doctors, lawyers and engineers. The ranks of these workers are shrinking fast, their pay decreasing, and benefits disappearing to the point of being nonexistent.
In the 21st century, many sons and daughters of these autoworkers have college degrees and professional careers. But with all the education, their spending and benefit power is unlikely to match that once enjoyed by their parents at mid-century.
As a boy, I spent my summers in Detroit at the home of my uncle who was a professor at the University of Detroit and a practicing psychologist. I played baseball with children of these autoworkers and visited their homes. I also visited the homes of my uncle’s professional colleagues. There was no comparison.
Middle class wealth in Detroit at mid-century was skewed towards these blue-collar workers. Now that class and wealth are gone.
Closer to home, my da had a seventh grade education and worked as a brakeman on the railroad while I was able to become a chemist, then a salesman, then an executive retiring the first time in my mid-thirties, mainly because the “rat race” made little sense to me. I would later go back to school and acquire my Ph.D. and become an organizational psychologist for a high tech company, and later a corporate executive for the same firm.
It was in that climate I experienced the “present ridiculous.” A study indicated company workers were motivated primarily by comfort, not job challenge, as the system was designed towards making them audience to rather than participation in the decision-making. As a consequence, most workers did as little as possible to get by.
Management, confused by this response, had human resources implement interventions meant to bring these workers on board by feeding them more benefits and making more concessions. This strategy drove workers more deeply into dependent compliance.
When you are not made to feel part of the problem, then the solution, no matter how perfect, is not your solution. You don’t own it because you feel as if a renter, not an owner.
This was made dramatically apparent when I was in attendance when the general managers and his direct reports were discussing how to distribute the quarterly bonus of some $5 million.
One director said, “We had a great quarter. Why don’t we share it with the troops?”
Another director clearly flabbergasted with the idea said, “Are you saying they expect a bonus?”
“No,” he answered, “just think it’s a good idea.”
Quickly, the disconcerted director made some calculations. “Can you imagine what that would do to our bonuses?” Typical bonuses were in the four figures for a quarter. Then seemingly to realize his position was too self-serving, he added, “They would get $400 at best. How would that motivate them?”
“The amount isn’t my point. The symbolic gesture would be clear: they count for something. I think it would spur them on to greater effort next quarter.”
“Bad precedence. Terrible precedence,” the astounded director continued. “What about our motivation? We made it happen? They didn’t! Well, didn’t we?”
Nods around the room, including that of the general manager, the point was conceded. The discussion was over. I stayed clear of the director that had made the suggestion to dispel the fear that it was my idea, which it wasn’t. I was as surprised as everyone.
An opportunity was missed. Over the next several years, I never heard the idea brought up again.
THE PRESENT RIDICULOUS PERSONIFIED – DELTA AIR LINES!
A number of years ago the employees of Delta Airlines were so happy with the company that employees purchased a jet liner out of their own pockets. It cost tens of millions of dollars.
That same company is now at death’s door struggling to stay afloat without a thing to hold on to except monumental concessions by these same rank and file workers.
It could be said that in this modern era of electronics in which planes take off and land essentially without human involvement that pilots are overpaid air bus drivers.
It reminds me of how the job of coal handler continued with the railroad long after trains ran totally on diesel fuel. Vestigial workers are apt to hold on long after their role has played out.
Now these pilots are being subjected to a second humiliation in less than two years. They have seen their $275,000 salary reduced to less than $200,000 with a 32.5 percent pay concession in 2004. This pay cut was meant to save Delta. Now, these same pilots are being asked, and have accepted a salary cut from $170,000 to about $146,000, or another 14 – 15 percent pay cut concession.
How many of us could take a 50 percent cut in our income and do it without complaint? Careful, don’t answer too quickly!
In my experience, most of us! We would likely behave precisely as the Delta Air Line pilots are now behaving for at least two reasons: we are mainly “followers” and into comfort and other-directedness rather than being self-directed; into security without pain rather than opportunity with some risk; and secondly, we have bought into the idea that the situation is “not our problem,” mainly because we have had little or no input into the problem.
Meanwhile, the airline executives, who own the problem, take comfort in complaining about the sins of deregulation, the fluctuating value of the dollar, escalating crude oil prices, competition from low budget air lines, the crunch of entitlement programs, government security requirements, and on and on. In other words, it is their problem but not their fault.
Clearly, nobody is in charge. Leaderless leadership reins supreme! The airline industry is not alone in suffering this malaise, as it is endemic to most institutions of our times.
My wonder is how much longer American workers will continue to take it on the chin while the GDP continues to grow with only a privileged few participating in the boom. That old adage, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” is in fact true. While the incomes of the top 15 percent persists in climbing, the income of the bottom 85 percent continues to decline at a depressing rate, creating an ever-larger delta differential.
An engineer once told me, “I get paid a dollar more an hour than I can afford to quit and do what I really like.” That same engineer is now working a job several dollars less an hour than he once earned, as his place of employment has been reduced from some 2,000 to less than 400 engineers now. Prudence proved “ present ridiculous,” as he still isn’t doing what he “really liked” to do.
FUTURE PERFECT – THE PARALLEL PARANOID UNIVERSE OF PANIC
We are all living in a schizoid world.
If you have any doubt, why would we build houses on swamp land, or on land that Mother Nature washes down the sides of hills in a moderate downpour, or along beaches that disappear in an instant from a hurricane or tsunami, or where mudslides devour villages because the trees that secured the soil above are gone, or why would we turn our cities into hostile gas saunas that pollute the air we breathe, or why would we produce nuclear armaments we don’t intend to use, but whose waste could contaminate our environment forever should they leak their venomous poisons into our soils and streams, or why do we randomly destroy the sanctuaries of exotic plants and animals, or, indeed, why do we allow others to steal our own inward lives putting trust in their voices while not being able to hear our own?
Luce Irigaray in “Elemental Passions” (1992) speaks for us:
“But am I a not a reminder of what you buried in oblivion to build your world? Where am I? There and not there. In the space of your dreams. And how can I return from that landscape, which I do not know? From those surroundings, which I cannot see. Where I take place only in you. And you fallen into the depths of me, into that dark abyss, which you imagine me to be.”
She is speaking of people doing stupid things because others say they should. This is tantamount to self-abandonment and negation of self-responsibility. Life is not fair and we will go to our grave with such complaint.
This life lived in the awareness of always moving to the will of others until that will is “swallowed” is what is called “schizophrenia.” This division, this hesitation and detachment, this self-alienation is embodied in the pervasive tendency to passivity. It is a kind of living and acting as if one’s life was a fiction created by someone else to fulfill his or her purposes and not one’s own.
Michael Foucault in “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” (1979) is looking at culture, but could just as well be addressing the cage we put ourselves in. He writes, “We come to know who we are by understanding how others see us and expect us to behave.”
The tendency for internal division is the architectural figure of speech that explains how our institutions have become cages by design with us their willing occupants.
This is so because of a radical separation between the observer and the observed, keeping the latter in constant surveillance. It is a cultural phenomenon that “the self” is not only a given but has become a “divided self.” We experience this division when we become a subject within ourselves, or when others objectify us as their subject. The extreme of this is when people are paralyzed to act because they are obsessed with what other people will think when they do.
Stated plainly, we don’t trust ourselves and we fail to trust others. Fear rules. And fear is guided by paranoia, which makes existence a total prison.
The other night a television news commentator stated that she had no idea why people resented all this intrusive electronic surveillance. “It saves lives,” she said, referencing the instance where a pedophile had raped and killed a little girl, but was quickly apprehended because surveillance cameras at a carwash caught the abduction.
Freedom is losing to the slavery of fear. The other day a shopper’s car in my area was broken into at a shopping mall, and the shopper blared to the television reporter, “Why isn’t there surveillance cameras in the parking lot? They should be everywhere. How else will we be safe?”
Imagine not being able to escape the ubiquitous eye of surveillance scrutiny no matter where you go. We are all in George Orwell’s “1984 world.”
No one mentions that ninety-nine percent of citizens are law-abiding who would be forced to conform to these intrusive demands, or that the sanctity of privacy was once a guaranteed right of American citizenship.
Consider this: since the person would never know when he or she was being watched, he or she could never cease to be vigilant. The self would have to observe the self. Paradoxically, this situation has already given rise to a sense of freedom in the prison of constant surveillance, the enslaved self bent on scrutinizing and subduing a “lower” or more objectified part of one’s own being.
Orwell wrote about this dualism in “Animal Farm” (1945). The paranoid person is both the observer and observed giving the person trouble identifying with these polarized roles of self-presence and/or observing-consciousness. A team of psychologists has used this “cut and control” phenomenon to proffer the idea of an imaginary eye looking down on one’s actions (see “Sanity, Insanity and Common Sense,” 1980), providing subjective health from the perspective of objective reality. The book promises a “groundbreaking approach to happiness.” In Orwell-speak “hell is happiness; happiness is hell.”
Insofar as one identifies oneself with the mind, one will be identifying with a being whose essence is always elsewhere, always perpetually watching from a remove. Louis Sass in “Madness and Modernism” (1992) sees the situation as a variation of the master/slave dialectic, considering those to the extreme of this lived experience, schizophrenic. He writes:
“Each self – observer and observed – comes to be defined almost completely by a relationship whose essence is distance and difference; thus the prisoner’s body would have to be experienced by the prisoner as a body-as-perceived, a body for the distant observer; when the observer’s being would be reduced to a single function, the being-who-observes-me-from-afar.”
“Big Brother is watching you, and the you he is watching is not the same you that you were!”
These sources are quoted to give evidence that there is professional awareness of the apparent collapse of integrity of the integrated personality in this age of living on the edge. Haynes Johnson in “The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism” (2005) suggests we have witnessed a half century of mounting hysteria producing this inevitability. Likewise, in an increasingly cookie cutter sterile world, Foucault claims the tendency is toward paranoia and self-policing in the face of four-corner electronic surveillance. Earlier, Sartre claimed simply that the inauthentic self is a product of people never doing what they most desire to do, caged in their fears, which bars the expression of their unencumbered passions.
This characteristic self-conscious subjectivity finds routine experiences becoming “shreds of evidence” vulnerable to suspect interpretation at the expense creativity, passion and the epiphanies they may contain.
A celebrated columnist that covers technology said recently on the “News Hour With Jim Lehrer” that he is never without some gadget. He has an iPod or video cell phone to entertain him should he be eating, dressing, exercising on a treadmill, sitting in a doctor’s office, or traveling by air. No quiet time for him. The eye is always focused on a subject with him as the observer. His fractured mind personifies the divided self with the hubris of having a hold on the good life while living in the serenity of the modern electronic prison.
No matter how he may retreat into the depths of these thingamajigs, he is lost in what James Joyce states in “Finnegans Wake” (1939) as “fathomglasses to find out all the fathoms,” later warning, “mustforget there’s an audience.” Once you forget, you are no longer self-conscious, and now in control, for you as subject-object have merged as one.
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Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologists and former corporate executive who writes on themes that touch his fancy from time to time. Many of these subsequently are published in journals and periodicals after first appearing here on his blog: www.peripateticphilosopher.blogspot.com
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006
Who controls the past controls the future
Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell (1902 – 1950)
Novel, 1984 (1949)
PART TWO
We have had a phenomenon in the recent past that defies explanation. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States has continued to climb impressively over the past decade or so, while the actual wages and benefits to workers has, during the same period, continued to decline.
Yet, there have been few protests, even less litigation and no mounted employee boycott or rebellion.
Nearly two decades ago, I reminded corporate America that its entitlement program was approaching $3 trillion dollars or equal to the then national debt, and accelerating. I pointed out that entitlements were driving companies to bankruptcy and were not tied to performance but were given across-the-board to everyone indiscriminately (see “Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches,” 1990). My book was considered an “angry book” and was discounted on that basis.
Repeatedly, I have written about “leaderless leadership,” outlining the pusillanimous and disastrous initiatives of human resources.
People have never been a long suit of corporate leadership. Corpocracy feels more comfortable in the management of things than in the leadership of people. It has been willing to abdicate this role to human resources throwing money at the problem rather than taking the reins to understand, appreciate and leverage a changing workforce to high performance. Human resources have made such a mess of things with a series of interventions transforming the workplace culture from comfort to complacency skipping contribution (see “Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge,” 1998).
Now, we find the American workforce quietly acquiescing to pay and benefit cuts as if they were the actual designers of this failed strategy. They were not. They are its victims. In the grand scheme of things, these workers have failed to participate in the economic boom, distracted by comfort and bribed with entitlements, benefits now being taken away from them. Even pension plans are going defunct. This situation defies understanding. While 85 percent of American workers have found their actual spending power reduced, the other 15 percent have found their good fortunes increasing by leaps and bounds. Something is wrong with this picture.
THE PAST IMPERFECT – THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE
The typical organization is represented by three kinds of people. There has been little movement or change between these categories with consequences yet to be felt. Internal stress and external demands are straining towards collapse and no one is paying attention.
“Foot Draggers”
Every organization has “foot draggers.” They represent 15 percent of the workforce and are considered “losers” or “takaholics.” They have little interest in the health of the organization and refuse to grow up.
Ambivalent leadership is inclined to vacillate between ensuring workers are management dependent or counter dependent on the organization, assuming the role of surrogate parents to these workers as dependent children. This is palpable in 50-year-old workers with the emotional maturity of 12-year-old obedient and passive children.
“Foot draggers” are self-indulgent and suspended in permanent adolescence. Driven by impulse and sensory gratification, they are the darlings of compulsive management that would save them when they are in fact unsalvageable. “Foot draggers” like to play the role of the martyr and there are always ambulance chaser managers bent on saving them from themselves.
“Followers”
“Followers” are appeasers that desire to play it safe and aim to please. They represent about 70 percent of the workforce. Descendents of workers of compulsory education where they learned the three r’s (reading, riting, rithmetic), they were groomed to run the machines of exploding factories in the early 20th century American economy. The subtle curriculum of this required education was training in discipline, obedience, punctuality, conformity, politeness, passivity, and submissiveness.
Stated otherwise, American education was never designed to provide an enriching intellectual and living experience for the majority where one could learn to appreciate the arts and the possibilities of leisure. Webster’s dictionary makes it brutally clear that education was designed to make a machine of man to do a job.
By no accident, then, public education created this monster and we are saddled with it now. Even our universities, which once escaped this stultifying confinement, have become factories producing professional workers to man technology. It should therefore come as no surprise that few American geniuses in matters of the heart were outstanding students: Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, to name a few.
“Followers” display moderation in all their actions. They are safe hires, seldom taking chances on or off the job, living within their means, never moving off the dime or displaying what they think or feel. It is not because they don’t think or feel. It is simply they are as much a stranger to themselves as everyone else.
“Followers” are a perfectly controlled species and demonstrate this disposition by being nearly inconspicuous to a fault.
“Hard Chargers”
The final 15 percent are the “hard chargers.” These “workaholics” think nothing of working 70 or 80 hours a week, while the cushion of their efforts is never great enough. They must have more, do more, and achieve more. If they have six-figure incomes, they must be millionaires. If they are millionaires, they must be multi-millionaires. It is not that money, per se, is important to them. It is as composer Billy Rose put it, how you measure up with the upper crust in America.
Work is a narcotic. Paradoxically, “hard chargers” mirror “foot draggers,” only to the opposite extreme. They both are compulsive; both driven toward reckless abandon; both inclined toward the dangerous with a feeling of invisibility; and both are governed by their own rules.
Whereas the “foot draggers” are out-of-control, “hard chargers” are obsessed with being in control. Both maintain individualized identities: “foot draggers” as victims and “hard chargers” as vanquishers. Incongruously, political “conservatives” are notable within both their ranks being equally inclined to be critics of the disadvantaged. Whereas “foot draggers” are predisposed to martyrdom, “hard chargers” are prone to grandstanding.
Both “foot draggers” and “hard chargers” are gamblers, but “foot draggers” always lose because they “have to win,” whereas “hard chargers” always win because they expect losing is part of the odds embraced to winning.
PRESENT RIDICULOUS – OPPORTUNITY AS COMPLIANCE, FREEDOM AS PRISON
A peculiar thing has happened which nobody seems to notice.
Take American autoworkers. They once enjoyed the same economic success (“As GM goes, so goes America!”), as most professionals, including doctors, lawyers and engineers. The ranks of these workers are shrinking fast, their pay decreasing, and benefits disappearing to the point of being nonexistent.
In the 21st century, many sons and daughters of these autoworkers have college degrees and professional careers. But with all the education, their spending and benefit power is unlikely to match that once enjoyed by their parents at mid-century.
As a boy, I spent my summers in Detroit at the home of my uncle who was a professor at the University of Detroit and a practicing psychologist. I played baseball with children of these autoworkers and visited their homes. I also visited the homes of my uncle’s professional colleagues. There was no comparison.
Middle class wealth in Detroit at mid-century was skewed towards these blue-collar workers. Now that class and wealth are gone.
Closer to home, my da had a seventh grade education and worked as a brakeman on the railroad while I was able to become a chemist, then a salesman, then an executive retiring the first time in my mid-thirties, mainly because the “rat race” made little sense to me. I would later go back to school and acquire my Ph.D. and become an organizational psychologist for a high tech company, and later a corporate executive for the same firm.
It was in that climate I experienced the “present ridiculous.” A study indicated company workers were motivated primarily by comfort, not job challenge, as the system was designed towards making them audience to rather than participation in the decision-making. As a consequence, most workers did as little as possible to get by.
Management, confused by this response, had human resources implement interventions meant to bring these workers on board by feeding them more benefits and making more concessions. This strategy drove workers more deeply into dependent compliance.
When you are not made to feel part of the problem, then the solution, no matter how perfect, is not your solution. You don’t own it because you feel as if a renter, not an owner.
This was made dramatically apparent when I was in attendance when the general managers and his direct reports were discussing how to distribute the quarterly bonus of some $5 million.
One director said, “We had a great quarter. Why don’t we share it with the troops?”
Another director clearly flabbergasted with the idea said, “Are you saying they expect a bonus?”
“No,” he answered, “just think it’s a good idea.”
Quickly, the disconcerted director made some calculations. “Can you imagine what that would do to our bonuses?” Typical bonuses were in the four figures for a quarter. Then seemingly to realize his position was too self-serving, he added, “They would get $400 at best. How would that motivate them?”
“The amount isn’t my point. The symbolic gesture would be clear: they count for something. I think it would spur them on to greater effort next quarter.”
“Bad precedence. Terrible precedence,” the astounded director continued. “What about our motivation? We made it happen? They didn’t! Well, didn’t we?”
Nods around the room, including that of the general manager, the point was conceded. The discussion was over. I stayed clear of the director that had made the suggestion to dispel the fear that it was my idea, which it wasn’t. I was as surprised as everyone.
An opportunity was missed. Over the next several years, I never heard the idea brought up again.
THE PRESENT RIDICULOUS PERSONIFIED – DELTA AIR LINES!
A number of years ago the employees of Delta Airlines were so happy with the company that employees purchased a jet liner out of their own pockets. It cost tens of millions of dollars.
That same company is now at death’s door struggling to stay afloat without a thing to hold on to except monumental concessions by these same rank and file workers.
It could be said that in this modern era of electronics in which planes take off and land essentially without human involvement that pilots are overpaid air bus drivers.
It reminds me of how the job of coal handler continued with the railroad long after trains ran totally on diesel fuel. Vestigial workers are apt to hold on long after their role has played out.
Now these pilots are being subjected to a second humiliation in less than two years. They have seen their $275,000 salary reduced to less than $200,000 with a 32.5 percent pay concession in 2004. This pay cut was meant to save Delta. Now, these same pilots are being asked, and have accepted a salary cut from $170,000 to about $146,000, or another 14 – 15 percent pay cut concession.
How many of us could take a 50 percent cut in our income and do it without complaint? Careful, don’t answer too quickly!
In my experience, most of us! We would likely behave precisely as the Delta Air Line pilots are now behaving for at least two reasons: we are mainly “followers” and into comfort and other-directedness rather than being self-directed; into security without pain rather than opportunity with some risk; and secondly, we have bought into the idea that the situation is “not our problem,” mainly because we have had little or no input into the problem.
Meanwhile, the airline executives, who own the problem, take comfort in complaining about the sins of deregulation, the fluctuating value of the dollar, escalating crude oil prices, competition from low budget air lines, the crunch of entitlement programs, government security requirements, and on and on. In other words, it is their problem but not their fault.
Clearly, nobody is in charge. Leaderless leadership reins supreme! The airline industry is not alone in suffering this malaise, as it is endemic to most institutions of our times.
My wonder is how much longer American workers will continue to take it on the chin while the GDP continues to grow with only a privileged few participating in the boom. That old adage, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” is in fact true. While the incomes of the top 15 percent persists in climbing, the income of the bottom 85 percent continues to decline at a depressing rate, creating an ever-larger delta differential.
An engineer once told me, “I get paid a dollar more an hour than I can afford to quit and do what I really like.” That same engineer is now working a job several dollars less an hour than he once earned, as his place of employment has been reduced from some 2,000 to less than 400 engineers now. Prudence proved “ present ridiculous,” as he still isn’t doing what he “really liked” to do.
FUTURE PERFECT – THE PARALLEL PARANOID UNIVERSE OF PANIC
We are all living in a schizoid world.
If you have any doubt, why would we build houses on swamp land, or on land that Mother Nature washes down the sides of hills in a moderate downpour, or along beaches that disappear in an instant from a hurricane or tsunami, or where mudslides devour villages because the trees that secured the soil above are gone, or why would we turn our cities into hostile gas saunas that pollute the air we breathe, or why would we produce nuclear armaments we don’t intend to use, but whose waste could contaminate our environment forever should they leak their venomous poisons into our soils and streams, or why do we randomly destroy the sanctuaries of exotic plants and animals, or, indeed, why do we allow others to steal our own inward lives putting trust in their voices while not being able to hear our own?
Luce Irigaray in “Elemental Passions” (1992) speaks for us:
“But am I a not a reminder of what you buried in oblivion to build your world? Where am I? There and not there. In the space of your dreams. And how can I return from that landscape, which I do not know? From those surroundings, which I cannot see. Where I take place only in you. And you fallen into the depths of me, into that dark abyss, which you imagine me to be.”
She is speaking of people doing stupid things because others say they should. This is tantamount to self-abandonment and negation of self-responsibility. Life is not fair and we will go to our grave with such complaint.
This life lived in the awareness of always moving to the will of others until that will is “swallowed” is what is called “schizophrenia.” This division, this hesitation and detachment, this self-alienation is embodied in the pervasive tendency to passivity. It is a kind of living and acting as if one’s life was a fiction created by someone else to fulfill his or her purposes and not one’s own.
Michael Foucault in “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” (1979) is looking at culture, but could just as well be addressing the cage we put ourselves in. He writes, “We come to know who we are by understanding how others see us and expect us to behave.”
The tendency for internal division is the architectural figure of speech that explains how our institutions have become cages by design with us their willing occupants.
This is so because of a radical separation between the observer and the observed, keeping the latter in constant surveillance. It is a cultural phenomenon that “the self” is not only a given but has become a “divided self.” We experience this division when we become a subject within ourselves, or when others objectify us as their subject. The extreme of this is when people are paralyzed to act because they are obsessed with what other people will think when they do.
Stated plainly, we don’t trust ourselves and we fail to trust others. Fear rules. And fear is guided by paranoia, which makes existence a total prison.
The other night a television news commentator stated that she had no idea why people resented all this intrusive electronic surveillance. “It saves lives,” she said, referencing the instance where a pedophile had raped and killed a little girl, but was quickly apprehended because surveillance cameras at a carwash caught the abduction.
Freedom is losing to the slavery of fear. The other day a shopper’s car in my area was broken into at a shopping mall, and the shopper blared to the television reporter, “Why isn’t there surveillance cameras in the parking lot? They should be everywhere. How else will we be safe?”
Imagine not being able to escape the ubiquitous eye of surveillance scrutiny no matter where you go. We are all in George Orwell’s “1984 world.”
No one mentions that ninety-nine percent of citizens are law-abiding who would be forced to conform to these intrusive demands, or that the sanctity of privacy was once a guaranteed right of American citizenship.
Consider this: since the person would never know when he or she was being watched, he or she could never cease to be vigilant. The self would have to observe the self. Paradoxically, this situation has already given rise to a sense of freedom in the prison of constant surveillance, the enslaved self bent on scrutinizing and subduing a “lower” or more objectified part of one’s own being.
Orwell wrote about this dualism in “Animal Farm” (1945). The paranoid person is both the observer and observed giving the person trouble identifying with these polarized roles of self-presence and/or observing-consciousness. A team of psychologists has used this “cut and control” phenomenon to proffer the idea of an imaginary eye looking down on one’s actions (see “Sanity, Insanity and Common Sense,” 1980), providing subjective health from the perspective of objective reality. The book promises a “groundbreaking approach to happiness.” In Orwell-speak “hell is happiness; happiness is hell.”
Insofar as one identifies oneself with the mind, one will be identifying with a being whose essence is always elsewhere, always perpetually watching from a remove. Louis Sass in “Madness and Modernism” (1992) sees the situation as a variation of the master/slave dialectic, considering those to the extreme of this lived experience, schizophrenic. He writes:
“Each self – observer and observed – comes to be defined almost completely by a relationship whose essence is distance and difference; thus the prisoner’s body would have to be experienced by the prisoner as a body-as-perceived, a body for the distant observer; when the observer’s being would be reduced to a single function, the being-who-observes-me-from-afar.”
“Big Brother is watching you, and the you he is watching is not the same you that you were!”
These sources are quoted to give evidence that there is professional awareness of the apparent collapse of integrity of the integrated personality in this age of living on the edge. Haynes Johnson in “The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism” (2005) suggests we have witnessed a half century of mounting hysteria producing this inevitability. Likewise, in an increasingly cookie cutter sterile world, Foucault claims the tendency is toward paranoia and self-policing in the face of four-corner electronic surveillance. Earlier, Sartre claimed simply that the inauthentic self is a product of people never doing what they most desire to do, caged in their fears, which bars the expression of their unencumbered passions.
This characteristic self-conscious subjectivity finds routine experiences becoming “shreds of evidence” vulnerable to suspect interpretation at the expense creativity, passion and the epiphanies they may contain.
A celebrated columnist that covers technology said recently on the “News Hour With Jim Lehrer” that he is never without some gadget. He has an iPod or video cell phone to entertain him should he be eating, dressing, exercising on a treadmill, sitting in a doctor’s office, or traveling by air. No quiet time for him. The eye is always focused on a subject with him as the observer. His fractured mind personifies the divided self with the hubris of having a hold on the good life while living in the serenity of the modern electronic prison.
No matter how he may retreat into the depths of these thingamajigs, he is lost in what James Joyce states in “Finnegans Wake” (1939) as “fathomglasses to find out all the fathoms,” later warning, “mustforget there’s an audience.” Once you forget, you are no longer self-conscious, and now in control, for you as subject-object have merged as one.
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Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologists and former corporate executive who writes on themes that touch his fancy from time to time. Many of these subsequently are published in journals and periodicals after first appearing here on his blog: www.peripateticphilosopher.blogspot.com
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