Early responses to COLD SHOWER No. 2
RESPONSE NO. 1:
Dr. J -
You make me g-d mad. I have to tell you that. I don't agree with you at all.
unsigned
DR. FISHER'S RESPONSE TO NO. 1:
It is okay to get g-d mad at me. I have no problem with your anger. I do have a problem when you say I make you mad and don't explain why I make you mad, or the rational supporting for you thinking otherwise than how I think. What produces such anger. My desire is to make you think; make you better understand why you think the way you do. Is it because it is popular to think that way; is it because everyone in your group thinks that way; is it your self-interest to think that way; is it because of your job to think that way; is it because of your affiliation with a social, religious or political group to think that way. It is not important for you to be honest with me. It is important for you to be honest with yourself. You see, my problem at this time in my life when my lights are dimming is to penetrate the darkness that I see all around me. It is the treachery of self-ignorance that makes us vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. We cannot escape ourselves. If we live a lie, the lie owns us. If the lie owns us, then we are not more than a slave to it. The perpetrators of the lie are always there waiting in the darkness to exploit our vulnerability to the lie.
JRF
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RESPONSE NO. 2:
Jim,
As always, you have put down an excellent paper which I read carefully.
Again, it is not a typical American problem, but one of the Western world. And I am afraid, it is a problem caused by our political system.
One paragraph of your paper jumped into my eyes:
"Workers, with the guidance of unions, who had their own regiment of MBAs, sued for higher and higher wages, and more and more benefits, while taking a pass on giving workers more control of what they did, or increased skills training and development so they might compete more effectively to a changing postmodern technological world."
The vast majority of the population is not interested in the complex political world, but in the comfort of such gadgets as you have pointed out (cars, fancy clothing, casinos, movie glamour, BlackBerries, laptops, videophones, PlayStations, Game Boys, MP3's, iPods, and continually more sophisticated electronic wonders). And each of them are voters who determine the outcome of the governmental race.
It is not only back to the 1970s, it is even further back to the old Romans "panem et circenses" (give them food and entertainment).
What does this tell us?
If you want to become elected, you have simply to make attractive promises to please the lower masses, not to ask for challenges -- which necessarily leads to a deplorable lack of intellect and other virtues.
As the unions and the workers force better conditions from the companies, the politicians oblige to the primitive masses. The is the result of a political system which doesn't fit anymore the 21st century.
Be well
M
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DR. FISHER'S RESPONSE TO NO. 2:
Response: This is from a European colleague and friend of mine who was forced to be a Brown Shirt in World War II as only a boy of eight in order to eat. He knows a time and a danger and life that I can capture only in books. I am a self-confessed Germanophile with Berlin my favorite city in Europe. He was executive vice president human resources of Honeywell International, while I was a director of human resources out of Brussels. He knows of my serious criticisms of things HR as well as my serious criticism of things MBA, but tolerates my ways. He has traveled the world and is a student of history. I am always enlightened by his exchanges.
Incidentally, it is true that Rome slept, as did Great Britain slept marking the end of their empires. Edward Gibbon's "History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire" claims logistics and internal self-indulgence (as M points out) led to its demise so the Visigoths could storm Rome. We are playing the same game with troops in Korea now for more than 50 years, and the Iraq War costing us from $33.8 billion (2002) to $171 billion (2007) without even including Afghanistan.
Finally, Nicholson Baker in his new book HUMAN SMOKE (Simon & Schuster) suggests we weren't the good guys, that FDR and Churchill did some funny stuff. The reason I mention this is that the history we read always favors the victors, and doesn't tell the whole story. I just read a novel by a Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo titled "The Redbreast" which gives yet another view of that terrible war.
We should be always open to new ideas, not necessarily to buy them, but to complete the soundness of our reasoning.
JRF
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RESPONSE NO. 3:
Jim,
Hope your shingles are better.
My opinion: In the last 6 – 12 months, your writing has reached some kind of personal critical mass in both quality and content. It’s as if your decades of pondering have somehow all come together to make a single picture. I think everything you’ve written is spot on. (that could imply you have dementia and your thinking has dropped to my level, but I hope not. )
I’ve often wondered if success carries within it the seeds of the next failure. Those who grow up amongst affluence don’t learn the lessons that created that affluence, and that’s what’s happening to America.
If you ever find out what made your respondent g-d mad; that’d be interesting. Me thinketh thou hit a nerve there.
Still working on the missive; just have been swamped.
Cya
e
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DR. FISHER'S RESPONSE TO NO. 3:
My shingles are about 80 percent gone. I'm a slow healer. Thank you for asking.
And thank you for your comment about my writing. I appreciate it. I look forward to reading your missive for the "Enlightened Leadership." My interest in the project has waned.
I am an individualistic thinker and not a group thinker, nor am I one that adjusts my focus or intensity to satisfy a group goal. I guess you could say I'm not a team player.
I think we are in a mess and it is a mess those that publish don't want to examine. I am not a do gooder or a crusader. I am a thinker. I'll examine questions of my time until I die without let up or reservation.
I have reached the point where I write to be writing, thinking that maybe some of it will stick when I'm gone.
I don't think a single presidential candidate, for example, has a clue as to where we are, how we got here, where we are going, or why, and therefore even less clue as to how to get us out of it. Leaderless leadership never had such a fertile soil.
I have been attacked on my stand on HR/MBA professionals, whom I don't fault for making a living in this manner, but they are monsters we have created without thought.
No, I'm not going to share with what I've received. It will come out in my writing.
My novel goes well but slowly.
On another subject, our current pope, and his itemized selection of "new" mortal sins, indicates how low we have sunk in the leadership firmament.
Religion has done what all disciplines do when they cease to be relevant or competent. They get where the action is; they become what Eric Hoffer once called "true believers," feverishly jumping on the current social-cultural bandwagon to discover their relevance because they have lost their sense of authenticity. Sad.
I have no trouble with people who have the gumption to express themselves. It means they have broken through that wall within the brain that holds us back from looking stupid to finally say something intelligent and meaningful. That person will read what I have said, and perhaps for the first time, be introduced to himself.
I was once teaching a graduate seminar in the theory of organization development (OD) for Golden Gate University. This graduate student came up to me after class in total frustration, and gave me a thorough piece of his mind, and a comprehensive picture of his frustration with the course, with me, and with life in general.
When he was through, I said, "Welcome to OD. You just broke through. Your intervention has been successful."
He looked at me his face red with emotions, breathing hard, not expecting my comment. For the longest time, he just stood there saying nothing, and I didn't interrupt his silence.
Finally, he picked up his books, and left. I never talked to him again the rest of the semester.
Then about two years later, I got a letter from him. "You won't believe this," he said, "but that session (with me) changed my life. It has been smooth sailing ever since."
And then he said the most important thing of all, something that I don't think many people today (sadly) ever reach, "I'm no longer a stranger to myself." I closed the letter and said to myself, "No, you're not."
Always be well,
Jim
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RESPONSE NO. 4:esponse 2:
Dear Jim:
Seems like you touched a nerve of someone who's sold on the status quo or is comfortable with the way things have been.
After watching the demise of Bear Sterns this weekend, I wonder how long we will be so kind to the folks who control our economy that has been leveraged with greed to the hilt. We are now seeing the "Perfect Storm" developing with 2 wars being waged with our kid's blood, sacrifice and money, housing bubble bursting, corporations shedding jobs, $5 gallon gas coming by summer, dollar trading at all time low, feds bailing out investments banks who made stupid investments in high risk mortgages, and so on.
We send our manufacturing jobs over seas and get back tainted toys, pharmaceuticals, that kill us and our kids and we are happy as a lark to let it continue to happen.
Keep up the great work Jim. Maybe someone will get mad enough to start doing something about it.
B
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DR. FISHER'S RESPONSE TO NO. 4:
Were I never to have left Clinton, Iowa; had I never seen my Roman Catholic Church up close and personal; had I not worked for two major Fortune 200 corporations at the corporate executive level across the Americas and the Western world; had I not experienced education from the private Catholic grammar school, the public high school, or the land grant university, at every level from under graduate to a terminal Ph.D., had I not consulted private and public sector companies across these United States, had I not benefited from corporate entitlements, and had I not participated in the whimsical world of a stock portfolio investments, I would have no problem with Federal Reserve bailouts, but, unfortunately, I did leave Clinton, Iowa.
What is happening -- dare anyone say it -- capitalism is not an infallible institution and is vulnerable to the caprice of the wealth controllers. By the nature of its construction, it will always have excesses, and those that pay for the excesses will always be those least able to absorb the shock.
I am so glad that I was born poor, and able to watch how men like my da were treated during the Great Depression, indeed, how his family was treated when he died, and left no estate, and the railroad didn't want to give my mother the puny compensation she deserved.
Many people write to me and say such things, as, "I was poor, too, but didn't know it." Well, this boy had a sensitivity since he came out of the womb to note and remember ever slight, every innuendo, every imperious gesture that was directed at my parents, and to sublimate it into my art and thinking.
My problem, B, is that little people like us think those people like Bear Stern and other holders of real estate mortgages, and all those hedge fund operators are smarter than the common Joe, AND THEY ARE NOT! They are just more greedy, and they translate their greed into being astute guardians of our capitalistic system.
We have a financial system which is supported by Putin's Russia and Communist China, among others, and most major European nations, who hold our note. We are a debtor nation, and if each of us operated the way our government operates, we would all be in deep yogurt to say the least. We are conducting wars on borrowed money, and running our society on borrowed money, and if Russia, China and Europe, not to mention several other countries from South East Asia were to ask for their money NOW, the world would devolve into the greatest depression ever known to man. IT COULD HAPPEN! It is unlikely to happen, and here is the irony, because of GREED. Yes, greed, keeps these investors in the US of A not withdrawing their money, because it they did, they, too, would collapse.
We make high finance like it is some beyond our comprehension system that only experts can understand, monitor and appreciate, but boil it all down, and it is grade school arithmetic.
What is the answer? It is implicit in your response.
(1) DON'T DRIVE SO MUCH!
(2) RUN A CHEAP ECONOMICAL AUTOMOBILE.
(3) DON'T BUY WHAT YOU DON'T NEED!
(4) SAVE IN GOLD OR OTHER HIGH SECURITIES!
(5) BE YOUR OWN FEDERAL RESERVE!
(6) THE RICHEST PEOPLE ARE NOT THOSE WITH THE MOST MONEY, BUT WITH THE MOST SENSIBLE AND CONTROLLED TASTES.
(7) DON'T WORRY ABOUT SAVING THE WORLD.
(8) CONCENTRATE ON SAVING YOUR SELF, WHICH WILL SAVE THE WORLD.
(9) DON'T READ 99.9 PERCENT OF ALL THE GARBAGE YOU GET IN THE MAIL TO BUY THIS OR THAT.
(10) START RECOGNIZING IF YOU ARE NOT A LEADER NO ONE IS.
(11) READ, READ, READ!
(12) DON'T READ WHAT OTHERS SAY YOU SHOULD READ, READ WHAT YOU LIKE, AND DON'T WORRY ABOUT WHAT OTHERS THINK.
(13) WATCH LITTLE TELEVISION.
(14) REMEMBER, CELEBRITIES ARE BY DEFINITION NARCISSISTIC, AND THEREFORE SYMPTOMATIC OF OUR CULTURAL DISEASE, NOT ITS CURE.
(15) USE YOUR CELL PHONE FOR EMERGENCIES, NOT AS A PACIFIER.
(16) DON'T LET THE INTERNET BE THE MAIN SOURCE OF YOUR INFORMATION. (17) DON'T BELIEVE 99.9 PERCENT OF WHAT YOU READ ON THE INTERNET OR BLOGS ON GROUPS OR RELIGIONS UNFAMILIAR TO YOU.
(18) FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, CULTURES AND RELIGIONS.
(19) REMEMBER, IN THE END, WE AS THE HUMAN RACE HAVE MUCH MORE IN COMMON WITH EVERYONE ELSE THAN WE HAVE DIFFERENCES.
(20) DON'T BELIEVE BECAUSE YOU HAVE THIS OR THAT DEGREE THAT YOU ARE EDUCATED.
(21) EDUCATION IS A FACTORY AND NOT A TOO EFFICIENT ONE.
(22) IN THE END AS IN THE BEGINNING, ALL YOU HAVE IS YOU.
(23) SO, IT IS ALL UP TO YOU!
Be always well,
Jim
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