GROWTH OF A MAN
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 15, 2008
“If man is not afraid to grow, and embraces his resistance to grow, he will grow. He may not grow, as others would have him grow. He may not be like what others expect him to be. He may not do what others prefer him to do. But he will grow.
“He will soar under his own power and become something akin to what he could become. Along the way, he will meet obstacles, disappointments, betrayals, humiliations, disruptions, treacheries, and outright hatred. He will also encounter friendship, encouragement, happiness, approval, support, loyalty, and love. This will determine whether he will be or not be what he could be and could become.
“There will be the ghost of temptation in every form, addictions of every description. Blaming these compulsions on parents, peers, priests, or prophets, or on the times and circumstances will be for naught, as they belong only to him.
“If he fails to deal with them, they will own him, consume him, enslave him, reduce and control him until he is a figment of his possibilities. He will be lured at every stage by the gods of power, control, wealth, popularity, and celebrity, all of which are false gods, as they can do nothing but diminish him and imprison him in his own cave.
“It is the social commentary of our times that we should be friends with everyone, be accepting, understanding, forgiving, loving, and always there for others. Why, then, does this not equally apply to us? How can we have peace with others without first having peace within? We can’t. All pathologies stem from our false gods and self-hatred.
“We have yet to invent a philosophy of life that acknowledges the greatest and only sin is waste, and that all other sins are but expressions of this waste.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., “Fragments of a Philosophy” (1970, unpublished)*
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A reader of “The Days of Top Down Leadership Are Numbered” questioned the personal basis of my assertion. He writes, “What is your empirical evidence?” Since my writing is mainly empirical, this surprised me. What follows is a chapter in that empiricism.
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MY BOTTOM-UP TEACHERS
My first and foremost teachers were my parents: my mother intellectually and spiritually, my da in terms of life and reality. Genetically, they provided me with a good memory, so good that teachers sometimes thought I was cheating because I could remember a page as it had been written. To this day, old as I am, in my study of some 3,000 books, I can remember a passage read 40 years ago, or yesterday, know what book it is in, and where that passage can be found.
My teachers were often other children or adults. Even as a child, some peers and adults made sense to me, others didn’t; some made me feel comfortable with myself, others didn’t. I learned at an early age to avoid those that didn’t.
There were things my mother said I didn’t follow, biases by da expressed I didn’t take seriously. I processed what I heard, and used it to go forward. Sometimes I would misstep, and be confused. In such instances, I would seek solace in my Irish Roman Catholicism.
It took me years to realize my faith biased my mind to think in a certain way. I would reject information that didn’t fit. It is a handicap I have learned to recognize and accept if begrudgingly. I am a Catholic thinker and cannot escape that identity.
In grammar school, I lived in the idyllic world of being taught by the Sisters of St. Francis. They were dedicated to making the student all he could be. They had no hidden agenda, and weren’t interested in perks or material gain. I benefited from this.
In a public high school, I found my best teachers, more often than not, were fellow students. I gravitated to them like a moth to light. They could take the most complex problem and break it down into easily digestible mental units.
I would, in turn, develop this skill spending my lunch hours helping other high school students with word problems in math while my teammates would walk the campus. Teaching made me a better student. So, it paid its own dividend.
Teaching also taught me the power of conceptualization. The student needs the framework of the problem in terms of content and context to comprehend its construction before the solution will be apparent.
DEALING WITH LIMITATIONS & FALSE PERSEPTIONS
When I entered industry as an industrial chemist in R&D, I found myself better equipped with chemical theory than the demands of the industrial lab. I was comfortable with chemical abstractions but not concrete experiments. If the chemical apparatus needed for an experiment was not on the shelf, I didn’t have a clue as to what to do. My mechanical aptitude was nil.
This handicap went back to my youth. My da had no interest in how things worked. He had no workbench, no tools, or any interest in mechanics. It was in high school chemistry lab that I discovered this blind spot, which was industrial chemistry blindness.
One day a technician with whom I was working, said, “You know your chemistry, but you’re in the wrong place. You need to be in some university, somewhere your talents can be appreciated because you’re a disaster here.”
Heeding him, I applied for a fellowship in theoretical chemistry to an eastern university, and was honored with a three-year fellowship for a program terminating in a Ph.D. The stipend I was to receive with this fellowship was not sufficient to carry me and my wife and two children as a full-time student. I asked to have the fellowship delayed for a year, and it was granted. I also sought a position with Nalco Chemical Company as a chemical sales engineer and was hired. Nalco intrigued me because its sales engineers used field test kits, making the transition from the lab to the field seem less frightening.
After a month-long technical orientation in Nalco’s Chicago headquarters, which was dazzling, but involved no sales training, I was assigned to the Indiana District operating out of Indianapolis.
To my horror, I discovered Nalco had a three-year field-training program with the total emphasis on technical development. The company was grooming me to service high-level accounts with specialty chemicals in public utilities, waste treatment plants, steel mills, the paper, petroleum, chemical and automotive industry, as well as other large manufacturers such the aerospace industry.
A sales engineer was not expected to sell until this three-year training program was completed. I was caught in a paradoxical dilemma making less than I had made in the laboratory with the future looking very grim. This brought out my belligerent nature, which is never far from the surface.
The first month I spent traveling with the area manager. Near the end of that period, he asked me what I had learned and how I would evaluate the experience. I told him quite candidly that I thought the calls were essentially social calls shooting the breeze with customers. When we called on prospects, I said, I thought he attempted to wow them with Nalco’s eminence in the industry, but he never asked for a single order.
EMPIRICAL REALITY KICKS IN
The following Saturday, I went into the office, which usually had six other sales engineers present along with the district and area managers. This particular Saturday only the two managers were there frantically smoking cigarettes, asking me to take a seat.
The district manager took charge. With a big smile, he said something that I would hear repeatedly throughout my long career,
“We don’t think you are cut out for this kind of work.”
Then he added magnanimously, “We think you should look for another job.” He studied me for reaction and I showed none. “We’re going to give you some accounts to service during the next month allowing time for you to seek another position.” Then he pointed his finger at me to make sure I was listening. “But at the end of the month, we will take your car and give you your final paycheck. Is that clear?”
Imagine an Iowa lad with a wife who has never been out of Iowa, making less than he had made in the lab, dealing with a wife that calls Iowa nearly every day, thinking about his fellowship, his son, two, and his daughter, six months old, trying to deal with the idea of being fired. This is a young man in whom the tide has always broken his way, despite his arrogance and aggressive personality. On the job a month, he has had time to offend only one person, his direct boss, the area manager, and he did.
Shock went through his system like an electric current causing the hair on the back of his head to stand at attention. Yet, he said nothing, showed no emotions, but knew in his bones he would never forget this moment.
“You can upgrade these customers if you like,” the area manager chuckled, and then with a nervous laugh, added, “You can even call on some of our competitor accounts in your area, too, can’t he Jack?” The district manager joined in the intrigue. “Sure, why not?”
I didn’t tell my wife because I knew she would be justifiably hysterical. Our limited savings, which were meant for the fellowship, were likely to dry up quickly. Indianapolis was much more expensive. My income in the lab at Standard Brands back in Iowa had been adequate if not luxurious. I had no plans to go there with her.
Shock has a strange way of introducing you to yourself. I am by nature high strung. When crises occur, however, I am as calm as if in the center of a hurricane. I demonstrated that in the navy. During naval exercises in the Mediterranean, a hang fire of a gun mount killed four and badly wounded seven others. I was a corpsman and did my job. Two doctors brought on board from other ships couldn’t do theirs. They couldn’t deal with the grotesque corpses or the stench of melting flesh. Now, the calm returned.
ON MY OWN IN NO MAN’S LAND
To compensate for my lack of mechanical aptitude, I dealt candidly with chief engineers and system operators. I would ask them to explain to me how their systems worked. I played student to them as experts. This was a new experience to them and it showed on their faces.
As they explained, I would draw line diagrams and schematic models of their systems with the appropriate engineering symbols, highlighting critical areas where failures had occurred with colored markers. I would ask them to tell me how Nalco’s chemicals worked or failed to work in these systems.
They would look at me suspiciously checking to see if I was putting them on. Once they could see I wasn’t, from the first customer I approached in this way, we connected. It was clear that they were in control and I was there to enable them to express that power.
By this simple act, we were partners, the customer as teacher and me as student with a common interest to make his system work as well as it might. In this receptive mood, I would explain the possible use of other Nalco products to improve operations. Upgrading these accounts became automatic.
Before the month was out, I led the district selling 80 percent of the new business while the six other sales engineers generated only 20 percent. Nothing was said about turning my car in or receiving my final check.
From this modus operandi, several things happened simultaneously:
(1) I learned how my customers’ systems worked.
(2) I learned to identify common problems using Nalco chemicals.
(3) I learned how to apply Nalco products to better advantage to meet customers’ needs.
(4) I learned the critical importance of feeding equipment. Positive displacement pumps delivered chemicals continuously at a uniform rate, while slug feeding, which was commonly used, was problematical.
(5) I learned that common failures of Nalco chemicals must be equally true of competitor accounts.
(6) I learned the importance of taking copious notes. After each call, I would summarize my systemic findings, assess the customer’s peculiarities, and plan my next call. This would become my operating bible.**
Slug feeding chemicals increased the suspended solids in boilers causing carry over into steam traps and condensate lines. This fouled up steam delivery systems, condensers, heat exchangers and other auxiliary equipment triggering operational failures.
Soon, I was selling so many positive displacement pumps that the sales distributor in my area called one day, and asked the commission I expected. Stunned, I explained my reason for choosing his pumps was because they were the best. I expected no commission. “I am in the specialty chemical, not the chemical pump business.”
When I started in the second month to call on competitor accounts, I would ask open-ended questions such as, “What kind of chemical feeding equipment are you using? How is it working?”
If they were slug feeding, I would go without preamble to drawing my schematic of typical problems I had experienced with slug feeding, labeling typical problem areas.
Then I would show how my customers' systems worked, inviting them to check with their neighbors. On the next call, they were likely to be waiting for me to show them how I could put “Joe’s system” into theirs.
This success with small competitors encouraged me to call on our largest competitor’s account in my area. It was located in the small town of Connersville, Indiana, a complex of three plants making Philco refrigerators, with the largest plant seven acres under roof.
On my third call in my third month with Nalco, the superintendent of operations agreed to see me. His office was located in the middle of this seven-acre plant framed in a dirty glass enclosure. I took a seat and for the better part of an hour sat there with the phone constantly ringing, men coming in and leaving with frustration on their faces, as failures seemingly were occurring in paint booths, fabricating centers and assembly stations. I noticed the superintendent’s desk was cluttered with an overflowing ashtray of cigarette butts, failed steam traps, and paper-thin condensate pipes. There were large failed mechanical units in the corners of the room standing like sculptured sentries.
The superintendent came in, lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and let it slowly out through his nose, and then looked at me. “Okay, sport, you’ve got five minutes. What’ve you got for me?”
I was 24 looking 18 and said, “I’m here to save your job.”
Now, why would I say such a thing? I don’t know. After taking in everything over the hour, letting it dance about in my mind, it just came out.
The superintendent was sitting on the edge of his desk, and nearly fell off; laughing so hard he doubled up as if it hurt. It was a tension breaker. With a glint in his eyes, he said, shaking his head, “Save my job, huh? Now how do you plan to do that?”
I showed him a diagram I had been drawing as I envisioned his extensive systems, identifying trouble areas his men talked about when they came in looking for him. I then let my eyes drift to the failed units about the room. Then I explained why failures were likely to occur in these places, and what could be done.
We were both on the same side of his desk now, looking at my schematic, and he was in rapt attention seemingly mesmerized by everything being reduced to a line diagram. Before he could say anything, I said, “I need a blanket order for a three months supply of chemicals and proper feeding equipment to make this happen.”
It is called the “killer instinct” in sales, but it exists in every enterprise, and it is as ephemeral as a flashing light. Hesitate, and it is gone.
He opened the center door on his desk, pulled out a slip of paper and tossed it to me, and said, “You’ve got it. Fill it out and I’ll send it to purchasing.” Then he added, “If you make this worse than it is, I’ll have your ass.”
Undaunted, I explained that an engineering team would have to survey the plant to specify the proper chemicals and feeding arrangements. I didn’t tell him I lacked the technical and product knowledge to fill this blanket order. I called it in to the district office with only an order number, then left.
Later in the day, I called the superintendent to confirm that an engineering survey would be made the following week. He said, “Are you sure?”
“Pardon me,” I said, not knowing what he meant, my heart sinking in my chest, thinking he had changed his mind, that the magic was gone.
“Your boss called purchasing to confirm the order.” He laughed, “I guess your people don’t trust you much.” I would remember this, too.
That Saturday there was just the district and area manager at the office smoking cigarettes, but this time, more casually. “Fisher,” the area manager said with obscenities, “How did you do it?”
Without obscenities, I said, “I asked for the order!” This struck him like a dagger. His face lost its color. Then more good-naturedly, I said, "I need help with the engineering survey and setting it up. I don’t know the chemicals to recommend or where they should be fed. I know nothing about this kind of manufacturing. They’ll also need sophisticated feeding equipment."
The district manager recoiled, “That’s not in the order.”
“Trust me,” I said, pausing for emphasis. “The superintendent has already contacted his pump supplier. They’re waiting for our call.”
The managers looked at each other. Then the area manager said with obscenities, “Can you believe this?” The district manager just shook his head.
MY OWN MAN
When the survey was completed, the chemicals ordered, and the system was operating with Nalco, it became a major account for the district and one of the largest ever sold. This new customer had previously been with Nalco’s chief competitor for twenty years. No Nalco sales engineer had called on Philco in nearly a decade. Complacency, I was to learn, always breeds dysfunction for long-term accounts. My timing had been fortuitous, but timing with initiative is always fortuitous.
A month later, I stayed until only the district manager was there, walked into his office, and handed him a piece of paper. He said, “What’s this?”
“Read it.”
“It states without a bonus system you’re leaving.”
“That’s right.”
“You have another job?”
“No.”
Panic was in his eyes, seeing me with a competitor. “Wait a minute. Look at this,” he said, with a shaking hand. It was a bonus system that he had drawn up but not yet implemented. It called for $1,000 (in 1958 dollars) to be divided among the seven of us on the percentage of new business we generated for that month.
“When do you plan to install it?”
“Soon.”
“If not immediately, I’m out of here.” It was installed the following week.
Since I was bringing in as much as 80 percent of the new business, this didn’t set too well with the veterans. Rather than be emboldened by this opportunity, they could see, correctly, where the Lion’s share would go, and they weren’t happy about it. I didn’t care. I wasn’t working for Nalco. I was working to honor my fellowship commitment.
Time went on and I was making nearly as much as the area manager, who fortunately, was promoted to district manager of Ohio. I had been saving about 20 percent of what I made each month, but then learned my wife was pregnant with our third child. There was no way I could fulfill the fellowship and live on our savings. The die was cast. I had to make the most of what I was doing.
Six months after our third child was born, with no one promoted to the position of area manager, I again walked into my district manager’s office with a note. It seems sophomoric now, but it was consistent with my combative personality. The note contained a summary of why I should be the area manager, implying in no uncertain terms this was not negotiable.
It so upset my manager that he couldn’t talk. He sat there, polishing his glasses, attempting to gain his composure. Then, suddenly, I got it. I was not his first, or second choice, but other veterans on the staff were. I had been with the company less than three years, some of them as many as ten. Pressure was on him from them, and Chicago, Nalco’s headquarters to make a decision. He was between a rock and a hard place. I was the only one selling and I come in and “demand” the position. I was made area manager.
Now, I was calling on major customers and prospects, and also training people under me. While my sales performance continued, it was the metamorphic change in my men that got the attention of the company. Veterans who had never performed were performing beyond anything they had done before.
Over a period of the next two years, seventy-eight men from districts across the country came to work with me. I kept records of these sessions. Also, the Director of the Industrial Division, and several Regional Sales Managers elected to travel with me as well. It was from this involvement that I was asked to speak at regional meetings explaining my selling strategy.
At the same time, I was developing a reputation of being a problem solver, not in Nalco’s traditional technical approach, but from working with engineers and seeing problems from their perspective, not necessarily management's.
This was natural to me. What wasn’t natural was explaining my selling strategy in selling jargon. I had never read selling books. I read psychology and sociology books. This would not do. To make connection, I had to read selling books, finding the bland “penalty of delay” “selling the sizzle not the steak,” and “benefits not features” as trite and patronizing. So, I abandoned the jargon and presented case histories. I concluded they could decide on their own the value and relevance of these histories.
SURRENDIPITY
Many things were happening in my mind. I was making a good living, now had four children, but was finding work no longer challenging. In a more cordial less intimidating mood, I went to my district manager, and told him that I was moving on; that it had nothing to do with him; that I didn’t know what I would do, but it would be something. He seemed both relieved and at peace with my decision. I sensed that he relished sending it up the tree to the director.
Three days later, I received a phone call from the former director of the industrial division, now executive vice president of international operations, who once traveled with me.
We got on well during that trip, both of us a bit bookish, both introverts, but he more quiet and congenial to my confrontational personality. He said he would like me to come to Chicago and talk to him about a new position. I suggested he come to Louisville, where I now lived, thinking I would prefer any discussion to be on my turf. He came.
He was completely familiar with my whole history, including my academic performance in college, and the fellowship that never was. “I want you to come to work for me. What do you think of that?”
“Doing what?”
“Doing what you have been doing for us for years, but on an international stage.”
“Whom would I report to?”
“Who else, me of course!”
“No one else?” He nodded. “What would be my position?”
“You mean title? You need a title?”
“No.”
“Let me put it this way. It is a position four rungs up the ladder from where you are now, as an associate vice president of international operations. How does that suit you?”
“How are you going to sell that?”
“I don’t have to sell it. Nalco is exploding in growth, 20 percent a year, especially in international operations, and we need people like you. We just aren’t developing them.”
I am a sucker for candor and I know it, and so went on the defensive. “Still, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Problem-solving, the way you do it, getting people to work together, something you’re good at.”
I chuckled. “You’re not saying it, Bob, but you know I’m a hard case.”
“Yes you are, but not with customers, just with your friends.” We both laughed.
So, it was, South America, Europe, and finally South Africa.
GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA
Whereas I would spend weeks in these various places about the globe, I was to spend the next year, 1968, in Johannesburg, South Africa, facilitating the formation of a new specialty chemical company. It was to be my job to bring about the successful integration of Great Britain’s I.C.I., Ltd. affiliate, Alfloc, South African Explosives Ltd. specialty chemical division, and Nalco’s subsidiary into a new chemical entity to be called Anikem, Ltd.
Several competing stimuli bombarded my sensitivity, none of which I either grasp or understood. I had had culture shock going from a parochial grammar school to a public high school. I had encountered various cultures in the Caribbean and in Surname and Venezuela, but I was always working with people in the context of the job, not the society.
Now, not only did I have to deal with three formerly competing companies but with their differing cultures, and histories as well. That was a minor problem compared to finding myself in the draconian system of apartheid. The word means, “separate development of the races.” Nine major tribes were designated as “homelands,” but tribe members needed to work in industrial metropolitan areas; so thus the dichotomy. These men were often separated from their families for months if not years, and subjected to carrying a passbook at all times. If they violated curfew, or were in metropolitan areas without the proper pass after dusk, they could be placed in jail for 120 days without being charged.
One morning on my way into Johannesburg, I witnessed tens of thousands of Bantu natives flocking into the city on trains from a place called “SOWETO” (South West African Township). It was a sight to be seen. Later I would visit SOWETO never having seen such conditions before, even worse than the Tama Indian Reservation in Iowa.
My home was an attractive walled in estate with a garden and a striking light post outside the stucco building, allegedly given to the mayor of Johannesburg by Sir Winston Churchill. I had a gardener, maid, driver, and house manager, all from various homelands.
My wife had nothing to do, no cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, no ironing, no managing the household. The three oldest children went to private schools taught by Irish Catholic nuns. My wife was provided with a vehicle, as was I.
It was colonial living and it was hard for us raised as we were in a culture of work and responsibility. Someone might think it idyllic, but for my wife it was impossible. She couldn’t call her mother; there was no television in South Africa; I was gone more than home; she wasn’t a reader, or a hobby person; the only thing she liked to do was shop. So, from the beginning, it became a kind of hell for her in every way.
As for the children, they were a bit isolated from other children except at school. They learned to entertain themselves by throwing rocks over the wall at passing natives, darting about the garden, or involving themselves in some other kind of mischief. I never learned about this until we were back in the United States.
My work was demanding but satisfying. I felt I was hitting on all cylinders, and making progress. At night, I would read by the fireplace that Gabriel always had lit, or listen to some mystery on the BBC.
We would go to the neighborhood Movie Theater that usually had an Elvis Presley flick, or some other film stars South Africans liked. Sundays brought the London Times. It carried synopsis of books. I could spend most of Sunday reading these.
Still, wherever I went, I would run into the excesses of apartheid, excesses my Afrikaner and British colleagues seemed to take in stride.
Meanwhile, tension was building in the family. My wife had little to do. I was often gone for an entire week either to East London, Durban or Cape Town, or for a few days in Pretoria. The children were bored, and becoming increasingly antsy. I’ve always had a relatively low energy level compared to most men, which required me to discipline myself to get plenty of sleep, exercise and eat properly, and allocate sufficient downtime to read, relax, and rejuvenate myself. Otherwise, I would fall apart. Increasingly, I had little time for sleep and spent almost all my waking hours working. The strain was telling on me, and I was becoming increasingly moody, irritable, and anxious.
Then one day, my gardener, whom I was quite fond of and considered a friend, living as he did on the estate, was murdered. He was about my age; taught me a lot about his country, and was well read. We often had lively discussions in the sanctuary of our home. To behave this way in public might have been dangerous for us both. I could be deported and he punished in some way. His murder devastated me.
The police came, and when they didn’t interview me, or didn’t inquiry as to how the murder took place on my property, I became incensed. I went to police headquarters and asked what was going on; had they found the murderer; and why had I not been kept in the loop?
It was then that I felt the full weight of apartheid, the full ugliness of this system; the full evil that had gravitated into my soul. This realization came in a simple statement by the policeman. “This is no concern of yours. He is a Bantu, after all, they kill each other all the time.”
Word had gotten back to Chicago about the same time that I had taken the British general manager of our Durban plant to task. He had allowed the plant to go off line with no one in charge. No doubt I had overreacted, but it wasn’t the first occasion of his incompetence. The difference between the Brits and the Afrikaners was the former were astute politicians and the latter great workers. It was common knowledge where my bias lay.
I received a cable from my boss, requesting that I join him in London for a short chat. Working to the point of exhaustion, still mourning for my lost friend, the gardener, angry with the Durban general manager for causing his plant to shut down, then being asked to travel 12,000 miles to have my ass chewed out was too much. I had had it. I sent a cable to London: “Sorry, too busy, I resign.” And I did.
THE REST OF THE STORY
My wonder is whether it is the mind or the body that first informs you that you are ready to snap. I was down to less than 180 on a six-four frame, when my normal weight was 195. I was not sleeping; not eating; and had become uncharacteristically quiet. I wanted to relocate to Spain and write. My wife wanted to move to Florida where her parents lived. She won.
Once in Florida, my boss called and asked me to come to Chicago and talk. I asked him to come to Clearwater, Florida where I now lived. He said he would meet me at Miami International as he was on a business trip to South America.
It was a different meeting, formal but not unfriendly.
“What are you going to do, James?”
“Nothing for a while, maybe write a little.”
“You think you can make a living as a writer?”
“Don’t know.”
“What are you going to do for money?”
“I’ve saved $50,000.”
“You saved that much?” I had no business telling him. But if it was a surprise to him, it was nothing compared to my wife’s. She was a dedicated spender and felt betrayed with my hiding all that money from her ($50,000 in 1968 is at least $300,000 in 2008 dollars).
“Yes.”
“Actually, it doesn’t surprise me. You were always frugal. Does it surprise you that I’m not surprised?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, it shouldn’t. I’ve admired your discipline, but quite frankly, hated your inflexibility.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yet you remain obstinate.” I shrugged again. “James, how can you do this to us after all we’ve done for you?”
“Bob, if I wasn’t doing my job, you’d fire me. My first manager planned to fire me after I’d been on the job a month. He said I wasn’t cut out for this work. Well, maybe he was right. The company is not meeting my needs. I’m firing the company.”
What I didn’t say was that I was tired, confused, that I felt betrayed, not only by the company, my wife, or the people with whom I worked, but with life.
I found most of my beliefs were lies. I had done the dance and found it was a charade. The more money I made the emptier I felt. I had lived in a grand style, been treated as someone special, and found my gardener murdered. He was a sensitive man who read books and dreamed of a time when he would be free. What does that add up to?
It was impossible for me to comprehend this green island in a black sea, where evil poisoned everything. I talked to priests, educators, and fellow executives and none of them saw the sickness I claimed to see. “Forget it, James,” they would say, “It is not your problem. You’re a lucky man, my son, don’t you see that?”
I felt helpless against this canard, out of my depth. People who looked up to me had no idea how disturbed I was. I thought I was going mad, and wondered if I already had. How could I tell my boss such a frightening tale? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. He had been talking for sometime and I hadn’t heard a word.
“James, you have a lot to learn. You’re a young man and giving up a dream. I doubt seriously if you will ever reached this pinnacle again. I worry what will become of you.” We embraced hugging each other like father and son, and then he was gone.
He was right. I would never achieve what Nalco had allowed me to achieve; never enjoy the kind of life they introduced me to; never again have people frightened of my call; and never have a job become my marriage partner.
My world would disintegrate; my marriage would collapse; my children would go hither and yon without guidance or direction; my mind would become entertained by Krishnamurti, and other mystics, by Nietzsche and other philosophers, by Alan W. Watts, and other outsiders, by Aldous Huxley and other psychedelic authors, floating in a world of myth and magic, and then like everything else, driven by the laws of gravity, falling to stasis, and what is construed as reality, but is actually another mythic astral plane.
When I was broke, I would consult on the side, but go back to school full-time for the next six years, needing to take undergraduate as well as graduate courses in sociology and psychology in order to qualify to study social, organization and industrial psychology at the graduate level.
The irony here is that I was forced to learn the jargon of the work I had been doing for years in my industrial career. I was forced to play graduate student when the world I had left was light years ahead of academia. Yet, I persisted to the end while wondering why so little life entered these hallowed halls of learning. They were as barren as industry only without the essentials of power and money. The academic world could be a temple but chose instead to be a cage. I understood cages. I would write about them, over and over again, hoping someday to get it right, and to find that magic touch that might open the flea’s nest of my brain to make connection.
______________________
*Fragments of a Philosophy appear in Dr. Fisher’s latest book, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
**The “bible notes” eventually found their way into Dr. Fisher’s best selling book CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970). See his website and blog: www.fisherofideas.com
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Q&A: THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED!
Q&A THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 12, 2008
QUESTION:
This piece shows incredible insight. Can we get a measuring stick as your thesis plays out?
RESPONSE:
I don't think there is any definitive way to measure this, but perhaps some indicators might be if:
(1) We could get our 800,000 lawyers to start practicing law and defending the U. S. Constitution, and worrying less about billing hours. Perhaps then they could force Bush and Chaney, and other duplicitous operators, to realize they are not a law unto themselves.
(2) We could somehow get the 550 elected men and women in Congress to start passing laws, and upholding others that protect American workers and consumers instead of falling in line with the demands of the 1500 lobbyists of the Fortune 500 companies that control them, none of whom are elected.
(3) We could get our major universities to quit falling in line with defense contractors, and worry more about developing minds and less about endowments.
(4) We could exact a penalty for American companies who send American manufacturing jobs and operations, and other businesses to totalitarian countries at the expense of tens of thousands of American jobs.
(5) We could get metropolitan areas of high crime to form citizen committees to monitor neighborhood activity, day and night, to discourage looting and violence, and encourage peace and harmony.
(6) We could get parents, teachers, caretakers and caregivers, as well as neighborhood volunteers, to coach, counsel and encourage kids to stay in school.
(7) We could get workers in corporations at every level to demand ethical practices, fair and consistent treatment of all workers, and proper sharing of the wealth of operations, tolerating nothing less.
(8) We could get elected officials to punish companies who exploit their workers and customers. I am thinking of price fixers, hoarders of products to push up the price, or other forms of malfeasance. These crimes should exact the full letter of the law. It is not that the laws are not on the books; it is that they are not enforced fawning to special interests.
(9) We would demand that people running for office knock off the flattery, telling us what we want to hear, and start discussing real issues, real sacrifices, and the real pain of change. I mean all pressing issues, not just those that resonate with the rhetoric. Pissing contests in campaign politics have become like soap operas, and all the candidates are guilty. Sadly, it reinforces my theory of leaderless leadership.
(10) We would demand the first to be fired be those in the executive suite that created the crisis, which is always generated from the top, and the last to be let go the ones with the least power and the most to lose. We sometimes forget that corporate executives are, after all, employees. They should be measured by the same draconian standards that they impose on their workers. A good indicator of bottom-up change would be the day the golden parachute becomes a museum piece.
(11) We refused to buy products from companies, here or abroad, that exploit their workers or are guilty of inhumane, or discriminatory practices. Few of these companies ever come to our general attention, operating surreptitiously under the radar. This is often with the full knowledge of those who are meant to protect us from them.
* * * * * *
If there had been a draft, the bottom-up outcry now would have been at least double what it was in the 1970s with the Viet Nam War. Young people, then, burnt their draft cards, protested on college campuses, stormed college administrative buildings of faculties in bed with defense contractors, or fled to Canada. This bottom-up action stopped the war.
Since we don't have a draft, political operatives have gotten arrogant. Recently, vice president Dick Chaney was interviewed and told that 80 percent of the American people were fed up with the war in Iraq. His answer? "So?"
In other words, the American people don't count. "We, at the top, know best." This corporate mantra has now been played out.
Our society is an inverted pyramid, which has allowed our country to spin like a top. Those on top are now on the bottom, at the precarious point of the spin. Up until now, they have been insulated from and impervious to the will of the people above.
We know what happens when the top stops spinning. It goes all over the place, out of control. Sound familiar?
The subprime fiasco is only an indicator of what happens when sweetheart deals are created, and greed and chicanery operate without license or control, or bottom-up response.
The other day the Tampa Tribune had mug shots of six CEOs that ripped off their companies, spent lavishly on weddings, gifts, dwelling places, and vehicles, while giving themselves stock options and unconscionable bonuses. My wonder is what were their direct reports doing while these shenanigans were going on. This, too, should be an expression of bottom-up response.
Ralph Nader, who has been attempting for more than forty years to stimulate bottom-up citizen response, sees a gap between knowledge and action. You will remember he is the man who wrote the book, "Unsafe at Any Speed" (1965).
General Motors became extremely paranoid with this young lawyer for what he wrote about GM's Covair. Sales plummeted. Nader demonstrated in the book how unstable the vehicle was, and how easily it could flip over "at any speed."
GM in 1965 was still the giant of American industry, and a law unto itself. It felt no ethical qualms about launching a full court attack on Nader's character by hiring an army of private detectives to find some dirt on him.
Senior management, as incredible as it now seems, felt if it could find Nader guilty of some compromising behavior, GM would be exonerated. Apparently, it never occurred to this management corps to look into the credibility of his charges.
Nader was found not only clean, but impeccably clean, while GM was found to be groveling in paranoia. Incidentally, this, which happened more than forty years ago, marked the beginning of the descent of GM into chaos and bankruptcy.
We need more Ralph Naders, who, like you, are dedicated to social justice. He feels there is a gap between knowledge and action, and uses a Chinese proverb to capture his meaning: "To know is to use, to know and not use, is not to know."
______________________
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 12, 2008
QUESTION:
This piece shows incredible insight. Can we get a measuring stick as your thesis plays out?
RESPONSE:
I don't think there is any definitive way to measure this, but perhaps some indicators might be if:
(1) We could get our 800,000 lawyers to start practicing law and defending the U. S. Constitution, and worrying less about billing hours. Perhaps then they could force Bush and Chaney, and other duplicitous operators, to realize they are not a law unto themselves.
(2) We could somehow get the 550 elected men and women in Congress to start passing laws, and upholding others that protect American workers and consumers instead of falling in line with the demands of the 1500 lobbyists of the Fortune 500 companies that control them, none of whom are elected.
(3) We could get our major universities to quit falling in line with defense contractors, and worry more about developing minds and less about endowments.
(4) We could exact a penalty for American companies who send American manufacturing jobs and operations, and other businesses to totalitarian countries at the expense of tens of thousands of American jobs.
(5) We could get metropolitan areas of high crime to form citizen committees to monitor neighborhood activity, day and night, to discourage looting and violence, and encourage peace and harmony.
(6) We could get parents, teachers, caretakers and caregivers, as well as neighborhood volunteers, to coach, counsel and encourage kids to stay in school.
(7) We could get workers in corporations at every level to demand ethical practices, fair and consistent treatment of all workers, and proper sharing of the wealth of operations, tolerating nothing less.
(8) We could get elected officials to punish companies who exploit their workers and customers. I am thinking of price fixers, hoarders of products to push up the price, or other forms of malfeasance. These crimes should exact the full letter of the law. It is not that the laws are not on the books; it is that they are not enforced fawning to special interests.
(9) We would demand that people running for office knock off the flattery, telling us what we want to hear, and start discussing real issues, real sacrifices, and the real pain of change. I mean all pressing issues, not just those that resonate with the rhetoric. Pissing contests in campaign politics have become like soap operas, and all the candidates are guilty. Sadly, it reinforces my theory of leaderless leadership.
(10) We would demand the first to be fired be those in the executive suite that created the crisis, which is always generated from the top, and the last to be let go the ones with the least power and the most to lose. We sometimes forget that corporate executives are, after all, employees. They should be measured by the same draconian standards that they impose on their workers. A good indicator of bottom-up change would be the day the golden parachute becomes a museum piece.
(11) We refused to buy products from companies, here or abroad, that exploit their workers or are guilty of inhumane, or discriminatory practices. Few of these companies ever come to our general attention, operating surreptitiously under the radar. This is often with the full knowledge of those who are meant to protect us from them.
* * * * * *
If there had been a draft, the bottom-up outcry now would have been at least double what it was in the 1970s with the Viet Nam War. Young people, then, burnt their draft cards, protested on college campuses, stormed college administrative buildings of faculties in bed with defense contractors, or fled to Canada. This bottom-up action stopped the war.
Since we don't have a draft, political operatives have gotten arrogant. Recently, vice president Dick Chaney was interviewed and told that 80 percent of the American people were fed up with the war in Iraq. His answer? "So?"
In other words, the American people don't count. "We, at the top, know best." This corporate mantra has now been played out.
Our society is an inverted pyramid, which has allowed our country to spin like a top. Those on top are now on the bottom, at the precarious point of the spin. Up until now, they have been insulated from and impervious to the will of the people above.
We know what happens when the top stops spinning. It goes all over the place, out of control. Sound familiar?
The subprime fiasco is only an indicator of what happens when sweetheart deals are created, and greed and chicanery operate without license or control, or bottom-up response.
The other day the Tampa Tribune had mug shots of six CEOs that ripped off their companies, spent lavishly on weddings, gifts, dwelling places, and vehicles, while giving themselves stock options and unconscionable bonuses. My wonder is what were their direct reports doing while these shenanigans were going on. This, too, should be an expression of bottom-up response.
Ralph Nader, who has been attempting for more than forty years to stimulate bottom-up citizen response, sees a gap between knowledge and action. You will remember he is the man who wrote the book, "Unsafe at Any Speed" (1965).
General Motors became extremely paranoid with this young lawyer for what he wrote about GM's Covair. Sales plummeted. Nader demonstrated in the book how unstable the vehicle was, and how easily it could flip over "at any speed."
GM in 1965 was still the giant of American industry, and a law unto itself. It felt no ethical qualms about launching a full court attack on Nader's character by hiring an army of private detectives to find some dirt on him.
Senior management, as incredible as it now seems, felt if it could find Nader guilty of some compromising behavior, GM would be exonerated. Apparently, it never occurred to this management corps to look into the credibility of his charges.
Nader was found not only clean, but impeccably clean, while GM was found to be groveling in paranoia. Incidentally, this, which happened more than forty years ago, marked the beginning of the descent of GM into chaos and bankruptcy.
We need more Ralph Naders, who, like you, are dedicated to social justice. He feels there is a gap between knowledge and action, and uses a Chinese proverb to capture his meaning: "To know is to use, to know and not use, is not to know."
______________________
Friday, April 11, 2008
THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED!
THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 10, 2008
______________________
“Nearly 500 years ago (1517), a little known clerical professor in a small community in a tiny church well off the mainstream of Roman Catholic Papal authority, posted 95 theses of concern on the Wittenberg church door. He was Martin Luther (1483 – 1546).
“Luther’s theses denied the pope’s authority to forgive sin, or the right to sell indulgences with the promise of forgiveness for the fee.
“He was an educated man, but at the bottom of Catholic Church hierarchy, where he could be taken for granted, exploited, and expected to conform to papal demands and excesses. He had little influence beyond his students, no way to promulgate his word to the masses, and even less sense of what he could do, or might do, until he did it.
“Despite these deficiencies, perhaps because of them, he defied the ultimate authority of his time with all his passion, energy and mortality.
“By a remarkable accident, Johannes Gutenberg (1400 – 1468) some 50 years before had invented the printing press. This new technology would be the vehicle to spread Luther’s theses to the German people with due diligence.
“Soon, it was translated into other European languages. The Christian populace was swept up in a Lutheran Moment. Later, the German cleric would translate the Bible from the Vulgate Latin into German. Tens of thousands of copies were sold. This gave the German people a common identity through the printed word, and led to a new word, nationalism. European nation states followed in the German mold signaling a new cultural era.
“A score of years later, the brilliant French theologian, John Calvin (1509 – 1564) systematized and organized Protestant ecclesiastical discipline into the doctrine of Predestination. It asserted that God had already chosen the ‘elected,’ that is, people who were to go to heaven. You could tell who they were by their austerity, frugality, industry, and success. This wealth creating system introduced another new word, capitalism.
“This was a ‘bottom-up’ change personified in leadership without power or portfolio.
“Change would persist, but society would regress into its old ways of top-down authority. The Roman Church was severely wounded, but would subsist with its evasive mysticism, resolute dogmatism, and ritualistic practices to this day. The more things change the more they remain the same.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND (unpublished)
______________________
Columnist David Brooks of the New York Times cites a new book, “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” (2008) by Philip Carl Salzman. The book argues that the al-Maliki Iraqi government in Baghdad’s Green Zone is politically and militarily inept.
United States Army General David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, has recently said as much on Capital Hill. The same is true of two New York Times war correspondent, who appeared on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show (April 10, 2008).
The progress that is being noted in a political sense, they report, is largely due to hundreds of Shiite and Sunni tribes taken matters into their own hands.
These observers now concede that Middle East societies are tribal in nature. National leaders have little impact on behalf of the nation because the highest loyalty of Iraqis is to their respective tribes. Order is achieved, and they all agree on this, not by the top-down imposition of abstract law, but through a fluid balance of tribal agreements, or bottom-up consensus.
The Iraqi people have had enough of al-Qaeda and are taking matters into their own hands. They are attempting without a sophisticated game plan, but with muddled determination to gain control of their country.
This bottom-up power surge of diverse Iraqi tribes has little to do with the American military power surge. It is the consequences of being fed up with anarchy, displaced lives, collateral damage, and ubiquitous carnage. Iraqis want desperately to regain a sense of peace and normality in everyman’s everyday life.
The author, the New York Times columnist, the New York Times war correspondents, and General Petraeus appear to be speaking of bottom-up leadership in Iraq. At this late stage, ordinary people in ordinary circumstances are asserting themselves through tribal leadership. This is not new. It is only new to top-down observers and authorities.
For the past twenty years, I have been suggesting that bottom-up leadership is equally true of American institutions in a series of books and articles. Bottom-up leadership is how things get done, and always have gotten done in communities across the world.
The Divine Right of Kings, Caesars and Emperors of the past, along with the Ayatollahs, strong-arm leaders, and heads of church and state of the present are all atavistic. Yet, in this era of media, attention is on top-down authority with little attention, and then only after the fact, of bottom-up authority where leadership now resides.
Top-down leadership in corporate society is being shattered. It is no accident it has happened in Iraq. Iraqis’ best and the brightest are long gone to safe havens across the globe. Common Iraqis, who lack the means or influence to transport and transplant themselves to safety, have had to suffer this terrible nightmare, and now are taking matters into their own hands.
It is a lesson man learns slowly, but learns ultimately as he has no choice.
THE DAYS ARE NUMBERED
The days of corporate executives making a thousand or ten thousand times as much as the working grunt are numbered.
The days of every worker looking to the CEO and the Board of Directors to lift them out of chaos are numbered.
The days of high profiled higher educational institutions, which are grand in design and marginal in delivery, are numbered.
The days of the supreme authority of the head of church, whatever the religion, are numbered.
The days of everyman everywhere taken it on the chin and made to suffer for the malfeasance and excess of the few are numbered.
The days of the glorification of the military as the absolute protector of society while robbing it of its youth and treasure in hopeless causes are numbered.
We are moving into a new era of man.
We are leaving the Sensate Culture of our magnificent past where we glorified ourselves at the expense of our humanistic roots. The days of retreating into self-idolatry, self-indulgence, and sexual-chemical addiction, while failing to discover self-acceptance are numbered.
We have done everything possible to manufacture ourselves into a fashionable commodity instead of finding the joy of living during this brief moment of life. The evidence is in our obsession with staying eternally young on the outside while withering to a prune on inside.
The days for being young and beautiful and potent are in any case numbered.
What will come will come. That is not a dodge. That is a promise. It will not be like anything we have ever known before. The American that had a sense of the power of the people was Jefferson. Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, even Washington were enamored of the harmony and control of the British monarchy. Those days of such captivation are numbered.
NOW IN THE TIME OF FUTURE FATHERS
We are not in the time of our Fore Fathers, but the time of our Future Fathers. They will be everyman everywhere doing everything.
We have seen what excess of top-down leadership and authority has done. It has polluted our environment for profit. It has contaminated our lakes, rivers and oceans for profit. It has exploited our skills and talents and energies for profit. It has infected our minds with guilt and sin for profit. But all those days are numbered.
We are finally reaching a kind of society in which people are not afraid to be human beings, to speak up, and not only be heard, but to take charge.
We are finally reaching a kind of society that is not afraid to mention what troubles them as a human being, be they a worker, student, or citizen of the world.
We are not there yet, but are moving in that direction. I had a conversation with my daughter the other night at my grandson’s fourteenth birthday party. She said, “Africa is not our problem.”
I turned to her and said, “My dear, Africa is our problem. The world is our problem. When 3 billion of the 6 and ½ billion souls on this planet make less than $1,000 a year, and live in squalor, unsanitary conditions, grovel for a life expectancy of 35 years, and are exploited to the nth degree, they are our problem. They are our brothers and sisters. They have not yet come to appreciate they not only count for something, but for everything.”
Eric Hoffer once said that the most dangerous thing in the world is to give a piece of bread to a starving man. We have done that. Change is irrevocable.
We have the Ayatollahs, presidents, prime ministers, the despots, the corporate intimidators, ecclesiastical intimidators, pedagogical intimidators, governmental and media intimidators, but their days, too, are numbered.
We have been looking for leadership in all the wrong places when it has been percolating on low pilot light for over a century. It is now about to break through surface tension and bubble up from the bottom into societal prominence.
We are going to become, finally, a society from the bottom-up, where the problems occur and the solutions reside. We are waiting for the reemergence of the Martin Luther of our age. Perhaps the Internet will find him or her and promulgate the compelling message in nanoseconds to the world. He may be you. What is your thesis?
______________________
See Dr. Fisher’s website and blog: www.fisherofideas.com
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 10, 2008
______________________
“Nearly 500 years ago (1517), a little known clerical professor in a small community in a tiny church well off the mainstream of Roman Catholic Papal authority, posted 95 theses of concern on the Wittenberg church door. He was Martin Luther (1483 – 1546).
“Luther’s theses denied the pope’s authority to forgive sin, or the right to sell indulgences with the promise of forgiveness for the fee.
“He was an educated man, but at the bottom of Catholic Church hierarchy, where he could be taken for granted, exploited, and expected to conform to papal demands and excesses. He had little influence beyond his students, no way to promulgate his word to the masses, and even less sense of what he could do, or might do, until he did it.
“Despite these deficiencies, perhaps because of them, he defied the ultimate authority of his time with all his passion, energy and mortality.
“By a remarkable accident, Johannes Gutenberg (1400 – 1468) some 50 years before had invented the printing press. This new technology would be the vehicle to spread Luther’s theses to the German people with due diligence.
“Soon, it was translated into other European languages. The Christian populace was swept up in a Lutheran Moment. Later, the German cleric would translate the Bible from the Vulgate Latin into German. Tens of thousands of copies were sold. This gave the German people a common identity through the printed word, and led to a new word, nationalism. European nation states followed in the German mold signaling a new cultural era.
“A score of years later, the brilliant French theologian, John Calvin (1509 – 1564) systematized and organized Protestant ecclesiastical discipline into the doctrine of Predestination. It asserted that God had already chosen the ‘elected,’ that is, people who were to go to heaven. You could tell who they were by their austerity, frugality, industry, and success. This wealth creating system introduced another new word, capitalism.
“This was a ‘bottom-up’ change personified in leadership without power or portfolio.
“Change would persist, but society would regress into its old ways of top-down authority. The Roman Church was severely wounded, but would subsist with its evasive mysticism, resolute dogmatism, and ritualistic practices to this day. The more things change the more they remain the same.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND (unpublished)
______________________
Columnist David Brooks of the New York Times cites a new book, “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” (2008) by Philip Carl Salzman. The book argues that the al-Maliki Iraqi government in Baghdad’s Green Zone is politically and militarily inept.
United States Army General David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, has recently said as much on Capital Hill. The same is true of two New York Times war correspondent, who appeared on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show (April 10, 2008).
The progress that is being noted in a political sense, they report, is largely due to hundreds of Shiite and Sunni tribes taken matters into their own hands.
These observers now concede that Middle East societies are tribal in nature. National leaders have little impact on behalf of the nation because the highest loyalty of Iraqis is to their respective tribes. Order is achieved, and they all agree on this, not by the top-down imposition of abstract law, but through a fluid balance of tribal agreements, or bottom-up consensus.
The Iraqi people have had enough of al-Qaeda and are taking matters into their own hands. They are attempting without a sophisticated game plan, but with muddled determination to gain control of their country.
This bottom-up power surge of diverse Iraqi tribes has little to do with the American military power surge. It is the consequences of being fed up with anarchy, displaced lives, collateral damage, and ubiquitous carnage. Iraqis want desperately to regain a sense of peace and normality in everyman’s everyday life.
The author, the New York Times columnist, the New York Times war correspondents, and General Petraeus appear to be speaking of bottom-up leadership in Iraq. At this late stage, ordinary people in ordinary circumstances are asserting themselves through tribal leadership. This is not new. It is only new to top-down observers and authorities.
For the past twenty years, I have been suggesting that bottom-up leadership is equally true of American institutions in a series of books and articles. Bottom-up leadership is how things get done, and always have gotten done in communities across the world.
The Divine Right of Kings, Caesars and Emperors of the past, along with the Ayatollahs, strong-arm leaders, and heads of church and state of the present are all atavistic. Yet, in this era of media, attention is on top-down authority with little attention, and then only after the fact, of bottom-up authority where leadership now resides.
Top-down leadership in corporate society is being shattered. It is no accident it has happened in Iraq. Iraqis’ best and the brightest are long gone to safe havens across the globe. Common Iraqis, who lack the means or influence to transport and transplant themselves to safety, have had to suffer this terrible nightmare, and now are taking matters into their own hands.
It is a lesson man learns slowly, but learns ultimately as he has no choice.
THE DAYS ARE NUMBERED
The days of corporate executives making a thousand or ten thousand times as much as the working grunt are numbered.
The days of every worker looking to the CEO and the Board of Directors to lift them out of chaos are numbered.
The days of high profiled higher educational institutions, which are grand in design and marginal in delivery, are numbered.
The days of the supreme authority of the head of church, whatever the religion, are numbered.
The days of everyman everywhere taken it on the chin and made to suffer for the malfeasance and excess of the few are numbered.
The days of the glorification of the military as the absolute protector of society while robbing it of its youth and treasure in hopeless causes are numbered.
We are moving into a new era of man.
We are leaving the Sensate Culture of our magnificent past where we glorified ourselves at the expense of our humanistic roots. The days of retreating into self-idolatry, self-indulgence, and sexual-chemical addiction, while failing to discover self-acceptance are numbered.
We have done everything possible to manufacture ourselves into a fashionable commodity instead of finding the joy of living during this brief moment of life. The evidence is in our obsession with staying eternally young on the outside while withering to a prune on inside.
The days for being young and beautiful and potent are in any case numbered.
What will come will come. That is not a dodge. That is a promise. It will not be like anything we have ever known before. The American that had a sense of the power of the people was Jefferson. Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, even Washington were enamored of the harmony and control of the British monarchy. Those days of such captivation are numbered.
NOW IN THE TIME OF FUTURE FATHERS
We are not in the time of our Fore Fathers, but the time of our Future Fathers. They will be everyman everywhere doing everything.
We have seen what excess of top-down leadership and authority has done. It has polluted our environment for profit. It has contaminated our lakes, rivers and oceans for profit. It has exploited our skills and talents and energies for profit. It has infected our minds with guilt and sin for profit. But all those days are numbered.
We are finally reaching a kind of society in which people are not afraid to be human beings, to speak up, and not only be heard, but to take charge.
We are finally reaching a kind of society that is not afraid to mention what troubles them as a human being, be they a worker, student, or citizen of the world.
We are not there yet, but are moving in that direction. I had a conversation with my daughter the other night at my grandson’s fourteenth birthday party. She said, “Africa is not our problem.”
I turned to her and said, “My dear, Africa is our problem. The world is our problem. When 3 billion of the 6 and ½ billion souls on this planet make less than $1,000 a year, and live in squalor, unsanitary conditions, grovel for a life expectancy of 35 years, and are exploited to the nth degree, they are our problem. They are our brothers and sisters. They have not yet come to appreciate they not only count for something, but for everything.”
Eric Hoffer once said that the most dangerous thing in the world is to give a piece of bread to a starving man. We have done that. Change is irrevocable.
We have the Ayatollahs, presidents, prime ministers, the despots, the corporate intimidators, ecclesiastical intimidators, pedagogical intimidators, governmental and media intimidators, but their days, too, are numbered.
We have been looking for leadership in all the wrong places when it has been percolating on low pilot light for over a century. It is now about to break through surface tension and bubble up from the bottom into societal prominence.
We are going to become, finally, a society from the bottom-up, where the problems occur and the solutions reside. We are waiting for the reemergence of the Martin Luther of our age. Perhaps the Internet will find him or her and promulgate the compelling message in nanoseconds to the world. He may be you. What is your thesis?
______________________
See Dr. Fisher’s website and blog: www.fisherofideas.com
Sunday, April 06, 2008
GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW! -- An Exchange of Views on the American Connection to the German Culture
THE GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW!
An Exchange of Views on the American Connection to the German Culture (First published as an email)
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 6, 2008
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Rabbi Hillel
REFERENCED EMAIL: "Alan Bloom was right! We have a German Connection!"
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
SOME GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT MY EMAIL EXCHANGES
One of the most satisfying experiences I have had in recent years is that of exchanging thoughts and ideas with stimulating people; people who think beyond the headlines of the daily print and television news, and don’t limit themselves to legends on the Internet; people who have real experience in real time doing real things while making meaningful contributions. Sometimes these people do things well beyond what will ever be known of them or their work. They do it because they must.
This has been my audience on these emails for the past more than ten years. I am greatly impressed with the quality of their minds and their quest to make a difference.
And, yes, there have been those, too, who copy me with emails that fit the narrow limits of their biases; people who refuse to think or believe that their enemies may be more like than different to and from them.
I am suspending this direct linkage for all intent and purposes because it takes more time than I have available at this late stage in my life and I would like to complete my novel on South Africa before my powers totally recede.
I am confident that many of my ideas will survive me, and that many of my projections will become realities. It is the luxury of a thinker being able to look at all sides and ruminate about them into some kind of a vision.
I will still write on my blog, where you can find me if you like. I am changing directions a bit, just as I have recently pruned my email list. A horticulturist has informed me that pruning is good for the soul. I think she is right and I thank her for the support.
Having said that, I wish all my readers remain forever well as they discover their own center. I am a provocateur, not a sage, and my advice from the beginning has been not to let anyone, including me, point out their own centers to them. We can never know another person much as we have been programmed to believe the contrary. We can with some effort get a glimpse into our own souls.
Every thinker, social, psychological or political interprets events in the context of his or her limited perspective, knowledge and experience. Wise as some of these constructs may appear, even as reliable as they may seem, they have true resonance only to and with their creators. This is as true of Freud as it is of Nietzsche as it is James as it is of Skinner. We should give pause as to why someone’s idea resonates with us before we swallow it whole. It can cause mental constipation or diarrhea of the soul.
This is because pointers of the human condition are limited by the limits of their own minds in only being able, if at all, to understand who, what, where and why they are.
By an irony of nature, if we are ever to know, understand, and accept ourselves as we are, we cannot farm it out to a discipline, guru, an ideology, a cause, or another knighted person. It is a singular responsibility and therefore must be a quest by a majority of one. For that reason, I feel it is seldom mounted.
JRF
______________________
THE GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW!
NOTE:
These two responders have differing views to my email -- ALAN BLOOM WAS RIGHT! WE HAVE A GERMAN CONNECTION! -- but are alike in their service to others.
I share them because they demonstrate a healthy sense of who and what and why they are. Both are professors with a different take on the same subject.
What they have in common is that they are doers as well as thinkers.
Responder No. One has dedicated his life in the service of others in a drive to attain social justice; so has Responder No. Two, but from a different perspective.
Responder No. One has been a wealth creator, and has put his mind and heart into attacking poverty and discrimination, not by writing essays as I do, but on the ground from his highly affluent neighborhood. He deals with wrenching poverty with all its concomitant ills only a few miles away.
Responder No. Two, as you will see in reading his comments, has traveled the world for decades giving his heart and mind to making the world a better place.
Responder No. One is only 40, and a member of the current generation coming into or already occupying positions of power in society.
Responder No. Two, although much older, is still working as hard as ever as he moves into his senior years. I find them both members of the GREATEST GENERATION NOW!
______________________
RESPONDER NO ONE
Jim,
What you say about Germans is right, but I'd like to point out that it's not the whole story. Have you read "Hitler's Willing Executioners?" It might temper your admiration for this nationality somewhat.
The Holocaust was not perpetrated by a few Nazis, but by an entire culture and nation that actively facilitated and/or participated in it.
If other cultures, including our own, have done wrongs as well, that does not mollify what the Germans did at all. "Two wrongs..." as the saying goes.
I don't have it in me to hate anyone, especially not an entire nation-full of people. However, I do not hold German culture - especially its authoritarianism - in high regard at all.
Having taught a large number of Germans, there is at least a bit to be said for Churchill's remark that "The Germans are like dogs - they're either at your throat or at your feet."
That played out so many times in my classroom that it became almost trite. A new German (or Swiss-German) student would challenge me on an advanced point of English grammar or even vocabulary; I would set him straight, sometimes embarrassing him if it was necessary, and from then on I'd have a delightfully compliant companion.
Some of my dearest and best students ever are German, including Steffi Keller and her boyfriend Mike, who are simply wonderful friends. My brother-in-law, Ingo, was born in Germany and raised by German immigrants - he is one of my best friends. However, I also have met a number of Germans (including Ingo's parents, aunts, and uncles) who at once deny and defend the Holocaust - an interesting contradiction, to say the least.
I've decided to wait seven generations from 1945 before I forgive Germany for its sins of the Nazi era. It has only been three.
Take care,
T
______________________
MY RESPONSE TO NO. ONE:
T,
I have read Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners," and still admire the culture that produced Einstein, Goethe, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Beethoven and Schopenhauer, among others.
I have also read Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" and "Breaking Faith."
Indeed, I have read and have rather an extensive library of twentieth century Germany, including several biographies on Hitler (Bulloch's, Fest's, Speer's, etc.), Aarons & Loftus's "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and Soviet Intelligence," Freidrich's "Blood & Iron," Wistrich's "Hitler and The Holocaust," Lukacs's "The Hitler of History," and Machtan's "The Hidden Hitler," to give you a sample.
My interest in Hitler is as a student of leadership, which shows how vulnerable people are to a demigod when pride and survival expose bare bones and baren souls. A best friend of mine, a German of my generation, experienced and survived that nightmare as a boy, and for it I would include him as a member of the GREATEST GENERATION NOW!
It is another lesson in my continuing pursuit to make people conscious of the fact that everyone must be a leader or no one is. We must not surrender our minds to anyone for if we do we surrender our souls.
That said I separate that terrible period of twentieth century from a people that rose from barbarians to establish a climate for cerebral and cultural genius.
I should add that the Irish people have always been admirers of Germany. The Irish Republic refused to declare war on Germany in World War II, although many Irishmen and Irish women joined the cause serving with the British military.
My best students as an adjunct graduate professor, which I was for more than ten years, were often of German ancestry. The same was true with my own career in science in college, work in the lab, in the field, in the corporation, and among the corporate executive ranks.
The atrocities of the Nazis show how low man can go. Stalin and the Soviet Union committed similar atrocities, most of which we know little. What we do know is that millions of Russian Jews perished.
All of that said, we Americans cannot change the fact that much of what we claim to be original is not; and one of our greatest cultural benefactors were of German origin despite any personal bias or experience. That was what I was sharing.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
RESPONDER NO. TWO
Jim
Thanks for the info on the German influences. You may find it of interest to know that our university has a MBA program that I have led off teaching both in Germany, across the Rhine from Mannheim, and in Pensacola. We are in our fifth year and fifth set of students and I often remind each of our German cohorts that this country owes much to
the German intellectuals over the centuries.
We are also fortunate to attract to this unique MBA program students from across Europe as part of this program but the majority by far are Germans of which several are second or third generation children from the guest worker program that was so important in rebuilding Germany after the war.
These are overall excellent students and tend to take on the additional challenges of my class design. No one in my MBA class for example can receive an A level grade unless they develop a learning project that is self directed. I consider an A grade a mark of a potential leader and the first person a leader should lead is him or her self.
Most of my U.S. students bypass this extra effort so I seldom have an A level grade in my local MBA classes, far more than half of the German students take this challenge on and succeed at showing initiative and self direction and gain an A.
The other notable difference is that my German students often self organize as a class much faster and often better. I believe this is partially due to the fact that in their experience the professor was a more unapproachable figure and students realized to survive they had to work together effectively.
I have taught now in Asia, the Middle East as I lived in Cairo for two years, Europe on both sides of the old iron curtain and have had many South American students.
Our U.S. students are good but there is just beginning to be a recognized awareness that the flat world we have created will make them work much harder and so many are starting to take education much more seriously.
American students can see that the only reason they can expect to make more than about $10 a day -- my rough approximation of the global wage level -- would be because they add value to their organizations by collaborating and creating new forms of organizing to serve great unmet human needs.
Well, as you can likely tell, teaching is still a cause for me and though my first MBA teaching was in 1972, I am not giving up and I will continue to teach around the world and then come home and help our next generation to take on the challenges out there and to make a positive difference.
Many in that next generation give me hope but in every class I also apologize for the mess that they are being left by our generation and tell them to read about the trials and tribulations of earlier generations, and to accept the challenge and enjoy the opportunity to truly make a positive difference.
Making a difference can be a challenging life, and I know how clear that is to you, and what I want most to pass along. Our legacy is important. Neither of us, I am confident, wants this next generation to be given fewer opportunities than we were given.
I take seriously the Chinese expression that crises is both a problem and an opportunity. That is what can make a life more meaningful. Since we are leaving so many crises to challenge them, the next generation of leaders will have to discover this for themselves.
They will learn, step up to some of the same demands and make a bit of difference just as we did. Then, too, they will leave a world behind where there is still much work to be done. But without this work what would humanity become?
We all need a good challenge or two and we are sure making that possible for all of those younger leaders.
K
______________________
MY RESPONSE TO NO. TWO:
K,
Your career and your contributions over the years have sometimes made me breathless. Where you get the energy, the humility, and the drive is a matter I respect and admire, but failed to comprehend. As I mentioned in a piece that I’ve placed on my blog of yours and the responses of others to my email “America’s Connection to Germany, I find you members of the “Greatest Generation.”
I have known you now for nearly two decades, ever since you first read WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, and invited me to lecture at your university to one of your graduate seminars. I have kept turning out books that most people never read, while you have touched thousands of lives, and by that touching have multiplied your influence, the most positive influence possible, that of the teacher.
One of your colleagues that also responded to my missive is doing great work with the poor, not by writing books and articles as I continue to write, but by being directly involved in the lives of the impoverished and disadvantage. He does this through his philanthropic work, and by direct personal involvement. He, too, I tap as part of the “Greatest Generation.”
You will note in reading your remarks that my hand is in them a bit. I hope you don’t mind. I mean no offense. As a matter of fact, your delight in lower case in your emails reminds me of my late da who stubbornly insisted in writing notes to my mother in lower case, although his son would constantly correct him.
Thank you for sharing, thank you for all your wonderful work, and always be well,
Jim
______________________
An Exchange of Views on the American Connection to the German Culture (First published as an email)
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 6, 2008
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Rabbi Hillel
REFERENCED EMAIL: "Alan Bloom was right! We have a German Connection!"
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
SOME GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT MY EMAIL EXCHANGES
One of the most satisfying experiences I have had in recent years is that of exchanging thoughts and ideas with stimulating people; people who think beyond the headlines of the daily print and television news, and don’t limit themselves to legends on the Internet; people who have real experience in real time doing real things while making meaningful contributions. Sometimes these people do things well beyond what will ever be known of them or their work. They do it because they must.
This has been my audience on these emails for the past more than ten years. I am greatly impressed with the quality of their minds and their quest to make a difference.
And, yes, there have been those, too, who copy me with emails that fit the narrow limits of their biases; people who refuse to think or believe that their enemies may be more like than different to and from them.
I am suspending this direct linkage for all intent and purposes because it takes more time than I have available at this late stage in my life and I would like to complete my novel on South Africa before my powers totally recede.
I am confident that many of my ideas will survive me, and that many of my projections will become realities. It is the luxury of a thinker being able to look at all sides and ruminate about them into some kind of a vision.
I will still write on my blog, where you can find me if you like. I am changing directions a bit, just as I have recently pruned my email list. A horticulturist has informed me that pruning is good for the soul. I think she is right and I thank her for the support.
Having said that, I wish all my readers remain forever well as they discover their own center. I am a provocateur, not a sage, and my advice from the beginning has been not to let anyone, including me, point out their own centers to them. We can never know another person much as we have been programmed to believe the contrary. We can with some effort get a glimpse into our own souls.
Every thinker, social, psychological or political interprets events in the context of his or her limited perspective, knowledge and experience. Wise as some of these constructs may appear, even as reliable as they may seem, they have true resonance only to and with their creators. This is as true of Freud as it is of Nietzsche as it is James as it is of Skinner. We should give pause as to why someone’s idea resonates with us before we swallow it whole. It can cause mental constipation or diarrhea of the soul.
This is because pointers of the human condition are limited by the limits of their own minds in only being able, if at all, to understand who, what, where and why they are.
By an irony of nature, if we are ever to know, understand, and accept ourselves as we are, we cannot farm it out to a discipline, guru, an ideology, a cause, or another knighted person. It is a singular responsibility and therefore must be a quest by a majority of one. For that reason, I feel it is seldom mounted.
JRF
______________________
THE GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW!
NOTE:
These two responders have differing views to my email -- ALAN BLOOM WAS RIGHT! WE HAVE A GERMAN CONNECTION! -- but are alike in their service to others.
I share them because they demonstrate a healthy sense of who and what and why they are. Both are professors with a different take on the same subject.
What they have in common is that they are doers as well as thinkers.
Responder No. One has dedicated his life in the service of others in a drive to attain social justice; so has Responder No. Two, but from a different perspective.
Responder No. One has been a wealth creator, and has put his mind and heart into attacking poverty and discrimination, not by writing essays as I do, but on the ground from his highly affluent neighborhood. He deals with wrenching poverty with all its concomitant ills only a few miles away.
Responder No. Two, as you will see in reading his comments, has traveled the world for decades giving his heart and mind to making the world a better place.
Responder No. One is only 40, and a member of the current generation coming into or already occupying positions of power in society.
Responder No. Two, although much older, is still working as hard as ever as he moves into his senior years. I find them both members of the GREATEST GENERATION NOW!
______________________
RESPONDER NO ONE
Jim,
What you say about Germans is right, but I'd like to point out that it's not the whole story. Have you read "Hitler's Willing Executioners?" It might temper your admiration for this nationality somewhat.
The Holocaust was not perpetrated by a few Nazis, but by an entire culture and nation that actively facilitated and/or participated in it.
If other cultures, including our own, have done wrongs as well, that does not mollify what the Germans did at all. "Two wrongs..." as the saying goes.
I don't have it in me to hate anyone, especially not an entire nation-full of people. However, I do not hold German culture - especially its authoritarianism - in high regard at all.
Having taught a large number of Germans, there is at least a bit to be said for Churchill's remark that "The Germans are like dogs - they're either at your throat or at your feet."
That played out so many times in my classroom that it became almost trite. A new German (or Swiss-German) student would challenge me on an advanced point of English grammar or even vocabulary; I would set him straight, sometimes embarrassing him if it was necessary, and from then on I'd have a delightfully compliant companion.
Some of my dearest and best students ever are German, including Steffi Keller and her boyfriend Mike, who are simply wonderful friends. My brother-in-law, Ingo, was born in Germany and raised by German immigrants - he is one of my best friends. However, I also have met a number of Germans (including Ingo's parents, aunts, and uncles) who at once deny and defend the Holocaust - an interesting contradiction, to say the least.
I've decided to wait seven generations from 1945 before I forgive Germany for its sins of the Nazi era. It has only been three.
Take care,
T
______________________
MY RESPONSE TO NO. ONE:
T,
I have read Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners," and still admire the culture that produced Einstein, Goethe, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Beethoven and Schopenhauer, among others.
I have also read Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" and "Breaking Faith."
Indeed, I have read and have rather an extensive library of twentieth century Germany, including several biographies on Hitler (Bulloch's, Fest's, Speer's, etc.), Aarons & Loftus's "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and Soviet Intelligence," Freidrich's "Blood & Iron," Wistrich's "Hitler and The Holocaust," Lukacs's "The Hitler of History," and Machtan's "The Hidden Hitler," to give you a sample.
My interest in Hitler is as a student of leadership, which shows how vulnerable people are to a demigod when pride and survival expose bare bones and baren souls. A best friend of mine, a German of my generation, experienced and survived that nightmare as a boy, and for it I would include him as a member of the GREATEST GENERATION NOW!
It is another lesson in my continuing pursuit to make people conscious of the fact that everyone must be a leader or no one is. We must not surrender our minds to anyone for if we do we surrender our souls.
That said I separate that terrible period of twentieth century from a people that rose from barbarians to establish a climate for cerebral and cultural genius.
I should add that the Irish people have always been admirers of Germany. The Irish Republic refused to declare war on Germany in World War II, although many Irishmen and Irish women joined the cause serving with the British military.
My best students as an adjunct graduate professor, which I was for more than ten years, were often of German ancestry. The same was true with my own career in science in college, work in the lab, in the field, in the corporation, and among the corporate executive ranks.
The atrocities of the Nazis show how low man can go. Stalin and the Soviet Union committed similar atrocities, most of which we know little. What we do know is that millions of Russian Jews perished.
All of that said, we Americans cannot change the fact that much of what we claim to be original is not; and one of our greatest cultural benefactors were of German origin despite any personal bias or experience. That was what I was sharing.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
RESPONDER NO. TWO
Jim
Thanks for the info on the German influences. You may find it of interest to know that our university has a MBA program that I have led off teaching both in Germany, across the Rhine from Mannheim, and in Pensacola. We are in our fifth year and fifth set of students and I often remind each of our German cohorts that this country owes much to
the German intellectuals over the centuries.
We are also fortunate to attract to this unique MBA program students from across Europe as part of this program but the majority by far are Germans of which several are second or third generation children from the guest worker program that was so important in rebuilding Germany after the war.
These are overall excellent students and tend to take on the additional challenges of my class design. No one in my MBA class for example can receive an A level grade unless they develop a learning project that is self directed. I consider an A grade a mark of a potential leader and the first person a leader should lead is him or her self.
Most of my U.S. students bypass this extra effort so I seldom have an A level grade in my local MBA classes, far more than half of the German students take this challenge on and succeed at showing initiative and self direction and gain an A.
The other notable difference is that my German students often self organize as a class much faster and often better. I believe this is partially due to the fact that in their experience the professor was a more unapproachable figure and students realized to survive they had to work together effectively.
I have taught now in Asia, the Middle East as I lived in Cairo for two years, Europe on both sides of the old iron curtain and have had many South American students.
Our U.S. students are good but there is just beginning to be a recognized awareness that the flat world we have created will make them work much harder and so many are starting to take education much more seriously.
American students can see that the only reason they can expect to make more than about $10 a day -- my rough approximation of the global wage level -- would be because they add value to their organizations by collaborating and creating new forms of organizing to serve great unmet human needs.
Well, as you can likely tell, teaching is still a cause for me and though my first MBA teaching was in 1972, I am not giving up and I will continue to teach around the world and then come home and help our next generation to take on the challenges out there and to make a positive difference.
Many in that next generation give me hope but in every class I also apologize for the mess that they are being left by our generation and tell them to read about the trials and tribulations of earlier generations, and to accept the challenge and enjoy the opportunity to truly make a positive difference.
Making a difference can be a challenging life, and I know how clear that is to you, and what I want most to pass along. Our legacy is important. Neither of us, I am confident, wants this next generation to be given fewer opportunities than we were given.
I take seriously the Chinese expression that crises is both a problem and an opportunity. That is what can make a life more meaningful. Since we are leaving so many crises to challenge them, the next generation of leaders will have to discover this for themselves.
They will learn, step up to some of the same demands and make a bit of difference just as we did. Then, too, they will leave a world behind where there is still much work to be done. But without this work what would humanity become?
We all need a good challenge or two and we are sure making that possible for all of those younger leaders.
K
______________________
MY RESPONSE TO NO. TWO:
K,
Your career and your contributions over the years have sometimes made me breathless. Where you get the energy, the humility, and the drive is a matter I respect and admire, but failed to comprehend. As I mentioned in a piece that I’ve placed on my blog of yours and the responses of others to my email “America’s Connection to Germany, I find you members of the “Greatest Generation.”
I have known you now for nearly two decades, ever since you first read WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, and invited me to lecture at your university to one of your graduate seminars. I have kept turning out books that most people never read, while you have touched thousands of lives, and by that touching have multiplied your influence, the most positive influence possible, that of the teacher.
One of your colleagues that also responded to my missive is doing great work with the poor, not by writing books and articles as I continue to write, but by being directly involved in the lives of the impoverished and disadvantage. He does this through his philanthropic work, and by direct personal involvement. He, too, I tap as part of the “Greatest Generation.”
You will note in reading your remarks that my hand is in them a bit. I hope you don’t mind. I mean no offense. As a matter of fact, your delight in lower case in your emails reminds me of my late da who stubbornly insisted in writing notes to my mother in lower case, although his son would constantly correct him.
Thank you for sharing, thank you for all your wonderful work, and always be well,
Jim
______________________
AMERICAN CONNECTION TO THE GERMAN CULTUREI
AMERICAN CONNECTION TO THE GERMAN CULTURE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 5, 2008
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 5, 2008
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
Friday, April 04, 2008
COLD SHOWER NO. 4 (Part One) -- WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED "GENIUS"?
Cold Shower™
WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED “GENIUS”?
No. 4 (Part One of Two Parts)
PART ONE
COMPARATIVE OR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS NOT GENIUS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 4, 2008
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
Question: What is your take on genius? I get the impression you are cynical of the whole idea. Let me quote from one of your books: “B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud considered themselves geniuses and so they could moralize about whatever came into their heads with the assurance it would be taken seriously.”
Do you not consider them geniuses? I would also like to know where you see yourself. You write about yourself in your books, but never about genius and you.
Dr. Fisher replies:
Before I attempt to answer your question, your comment refers to chapter VII in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007) where I write about the interesting role of the outsider who goes against the grain of established cultural practices.
Outsiders are often moralists. The irony in trying to explain the world as they see it, or themselves as they feel themselves to be, they touch a cord or perhaps many cords of insiders. Sometimes this is quite by accident, but more often it is an obsessive quest to be insiders, and “voila!” They become the darlings of insiders.
They seek to create a reputation and some claim to fame. When they succeed, they are inclined to manage their image with the care of a Hollywood celebrity.
Then, of course, there are outsiders that never bother themselves with image making. As a consequence, they remain on the periphery of general consciousness. I am thinking of such existential thinkers as Rollo May, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who, incidentally, refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. They had their devotees, to be sure, but they are not as familiar as names such as B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. What you refer to appears as follows in my book:
“Skinner, Freud, and Jung make philosophical statements on the human condition, but claim to be scientists with philosophy outside their discipline. Yet, it is the nature of their work that has created the gulf between observer and subject that has drawn attention to this inconsistency. Meanwhile, outsiders they scorn take advantage of this intimacy with the subject, seeing their role as being part of the story.
“Freud advised Jung to ignore his critics, while Skinner chose to brand them neurotic or psychotic. Skinner sees himself beyond criticism, especially by people outside the discipline. Another conviction Skinner holds in common with Freud and Jung is that he is a genius. The mere fact that he would be of such a mind suggests he considers genius a rarity when actually genius is quite common.” (A Look Back To See Ahead, p. 59)
We are in the age of media dominance and media like to toss around such words as “genius” with whimsical insouciance. They are in the business of creating icons. Media have worked in concert with such self-absorbed individuals and their coterie to establish the mystic of genius.
Albert Einstein knew and understood this game long before it was an established industry. He confessed, “Why denigrate oneself? Others take care of that when necessary.” He also said, “People flatter me as long as I don’t get in their way.” Once his reputation was established, and he could coast through life, he also said, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer. I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.” This is a man who changed physics and the modern world.
Einstein was ahead of the celebrity curve as well becoming the equivalent of a “rock star” of science by his admirers, who found it of slight importance that they had only the vaguest notion of what he had accomplished. I find it interesting that he seemed to delight in feeding this public idolatry and that fantasy. Yet, it would be remiss not to consider Einstein an extremely gifted man.
My point, and one you quote accurately, is that I think genius is common, not rare, and that there are all kinds of geniuses:
(1) There is a genius in animal intelligence found in athletics where the athlete intuitively and instinctively does the right thing in the blinking of an eye.
(2) There is emotional genius where a person maintains self-control under the most extraordinarily demanding of circumstances.
(3) There is intellectual genius in the ability of a writer to capture the essence of his ideas and distill them in a manner that they having meaning and moment to others.
(4) There is the genius of physical beauty as Nature’s hand has touched a person’s sculptured and textured self with incredible kindness.
(5) There is the genius of personal service to others well above and beyond whatever could be expected.
(6) There is the genius of having an eye for organization putting people and purpose together to comparative advantage. Organization genius finds a person creating from little a viable, functioning, progressive and effective association. Once organized, it carries forward on its own power.
(7) There is the genius of doing nothing and appreciating everything, using this brief moment of life to grow in wisdom and knowledge and awareness of those things that cost nothing, and are free to enjoy, while being unconcerned about accumulating anything.
(8) There is the genius of taking people alienated by hostility, dissolving their differences, and forming them into a collaborative coalition by showing them how much more they have in common than what divides them.
(9) There is mechanical genius with the ability to see machines in three-dimensions and to visualize their working parts as if they were functioning separately.
(10) There is the genius of love that shines its light in the darkness of hate, which carries people out of the cave of their despair.
(11) There is the genius of acceptance, which means you don’t own other people’s problems, but will help them solve them if they but have the will.
In simple terms, genius is a many faceted, multi-colored, multi-perspective, and multi-dimensional entity. Genius is before our eyes every day, but not always recognized or celebrated as such. One of the ironies of human nature is that we don’t know how wonderful or gifted we are until someone tells us. The human tendency is to take what we have been given for granted, as if everyone else is equipped with the same gifts, the same talents, and the same capacities, when we know this is not true.
Sometimes, as a result, we flaunt our gifts, or prostitute them with a devil may care attitude, squandering our special talent until it no longer exists, as Lord Byron did, as Malcolm Lowry did, as many others in the arts, athletics, sciences, and in the public arena have. In my own ethnicity, two Irishmen, Timothy Leary in psychology and F. Scott Fitzgerald in literature come to mind.
It concerns me the way people are cavalierly labeled brilliant, gifted, or, indeed, genius. It indicates the patronizing malaise of comparing and competing.
Comparing focuses on the talent of others or what others have at the expense of focusing on our own talent, what we have, and what we might do with it.
Moreover, there is no greater cultural disease than competition.
When we compete in an effort to match the talent or genius that others possess, it enslaves and degrades our minds to be synthetic copies of what others are and have achieved. That said “being competitive” is one of the most prevalent and certainly most destructive forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if it becomes obsessive, we turn into dull, imitative, and an insensitive person to our own unique gifts. Mediocrity is the price we pay for this mania to measure up to someone else’s talent, which results, ultimately, in burning ourselves out.
Often people stereotype us by saying, “You are just like Dick/Jane.” By doing this, they assist us in this debilitating competitive and comparative programming.
Parents, friends and peers can induce us into the competitive process until it becomes habitual behavior. We go out for sports or for the band or glee club or this or that activity with little insight into our uniqueness. Likewise, we launch ourselves into a career in medicine, science, engineering, accounting, or law with little enthusiasm until one day we find ourselves locked in to it for life.
Then, being competitive grows into a habit. We leave initiative, imagination, originality and spontaneity behind in order to fit in, while convincing ourselves this is what I always wanted to be, when we know it is a lie. We have only this one life to live. Yet, without a second thought, far too frequently, we will our careers to the highest flatterers. Meanwhile, our secret love atrophies in the closet of our mind.
Those that we construe as genius have another agenda:
(1) They don’t focus on what is “in” or “out” or what is the prescribed orbit to get ahead.
(2) They do not contaminate their aspirations to be everything to everybody and nothing to themselves.
(3) On the contrary, they follow their bliss.
Unfortunately, the habit of competing is so widespread that many people firmly believe it is the “Law of Nature.” Competition is frequently praised as a great virtue to be developed by everyone. This lies at cross-purposes to breathing life into one’s own unique talent and frustrates relationships with others because of the envy of what they are and have at the expense of developing one’s own gifts.
The moment our focus is on imitating and emulating the model of others is the moment we move away from our own genius. I am a writer. I have been a writer since I was a little boy of five-years-old, a dreamer, a wonderer, an idealist; a person who often wrote little notes on envelopes, margins of books, magazines or newspapers of my thoughts and feelings, perceptions of how everyday things influenced or provoked me. I have even gone to the very dangerous and questionable business of putting these ideas into print, flawed as they are, as imperfect as they are, sometimes as supercilious as they are, inaccurate as they might prove to be, and, indeed, as repetitive as they often are. Yet, I do it. Why? That will be the subject of the second part of “genius.”
See Dr. Fisher’s books and articles on his website: www.fisherofideas.com.
WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED “GENIUS”?
No. 4 (Part One of Two Parts)
PART ONE
COMPARATIVE OR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS NOT GENIUS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 4, 2008
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
Question: What is your take on genius? I get the impression you are cynical of the whole idea. Let me quote from one of your books: “B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud considered themselves geniuses and so they could moralize about whatever came into their heads with the assurance it would be taken seriously.”
Do you not consider them geniuses? I would also like to know where you see yourself. You write about yourself in your books, but never about genius and you.
Dr. Fisher replies:
Before I attempt to answer your question, your comment refers to chapter VII in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007) where I write about the interesting role of the outsider who goes against the grain of established cultural practices.
Outsiders are often moralists. The irony in trying to explain the world as they see it, or themselves as they feel themselves to be, they touch a cord or perhaps many cords of insiders. Sometimes this is quite by accident, but more often it is an obsessive quest to be insiders, and “voila!” They become the darlings of insiders.
They seek to create a reputation and some claim to fame. When they succeed, they are inclined to manage their image with the care of a Hollywood celebrity.
Then, of course, there are outsiders that never bother themselves with image making. As a consequence, they remain on the periphery of general consciousness. I am thinking of such existential thinkers as Rollo May, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who, incidentally, refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. They had their devotees, to be sure, but they are not as familiar as names such as B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. What you refer to appears as follows in my book:
“Skinner, Freud, and Jung make philosophical statements on the human condition, but claim to be scientists with philosophy outside their discipline. Yet, it is the nature of their work that has created the gulf between observer and subject that has drawn attention to this inconsistency. Meanwhile, outsiders they scorn take advantage of this intimacy with the subject, seeing their role as being part of the story.
“Freud advised Jung to ignore his critics, while Skinner chose to brand them neurotic or psychotic. Skinner sees himself beyond criticism, especially by people outside the discipline. Another conviction Skinner holds in common with Freud and Jung is that he is a genius. The mere fact that he would be of such a mind suggests he considers genius a rarity when actually genius is quite common.” (A Look Back To See Ahead, p. 59)
We are in the age of media dominance and media like to toss around such words as “genius” with whimsical insouciance. They are in the business of creating icons. Media have worked in concert with such self-absorbed individuals and their coterie to establish the mystic of genius.
Albert Einstein knew and understood this game long before it was an established industry. He confessed, “Why denigrate oneself? Others take care of that when necessary.” He also said, “People flatter me as long as I don’t get in their way.” Once his reputation was established, and he could coast through life, he also said, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer. I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.” This is a man who changed physics and the modern world.
Einstein was ahead of the celebrity curve as well becoming the equivalent of a “rock star” of science by his admirers, who found it of slight importance that they had only the vaguest notion of what he had accomplished. I find it interesting that he seemed to delight in feeding this public idolatry and that fantasy. Yet, it would be remiss not to consider Einstein an extremely gifted man.
My point, and one you quote accurately, is that I think genius is common, not rare, and that there are all kinds of geniuses:
(1) There is a genius in animal intelligence found in athletics where the athlete intuitively and instinctively does the right thing in the blinking of an eye.
(2) There is emotional genius where a person maintains self-control under the most extraordinarily demanding of circumstances.
(3) There is intellectual genius in the ability of a writer to capture the essence of his ideas and distill them in a manner that they having meaning and moment to others.
(4) There is the genius of physical beauty as Nature’s hand has touched a person’s sculptured and textured self with incredible kindness.
(5) There is the genius of personal service to others well above and beyond whatever could be expected.
(6) There is the genius of having an eye for organization putting people and purpose together to comparative advantage. Organization genius finds a person creating from little a viable, functioning, progressive and effective association. Once organized, it carries forward on its own power.
(7) There is the genius of doing nothing and appreciating everything, using this brief moment of life to grow in wisdom and knowledge and awareness of those things that cost nothing, and are free to enjoy, while being unconcerned about accumulating anything.
(8) There is the genius of taking people alienated by hostility, dissolving their differences, and forming them into a collaborative coalition by showing them how much more they have in common than what divides them.
(9) There is mechanical genius with the ability to see machines in three-dimensions and to visualize their working parts as if they were functioning separately.
(10) There is the genius of love that shines its light in the darkness of hate, which carries people out of the cave of their despair.
(11) There is the genius of acceptance, which means you don’t own other people’s problems, but will help them solve them if they but have the will.
In simple terms, genius is a many faceted, multi-colored, multi-perspective, and multi-dimensional entity. Genius is before our eyes every day, but not always recognized or celebrated as such. One of the ironies of human nature is that we don’t know how wonderful or gifted we are until someone tells us. The human tendency is to take what we have been given for granted, as if everyone else is equipped with the same gifts, the same talents, and the same capacities, when we know this is not true.
Sometimes, as a result, we flaunt our gifts, or prostitute them with a devil may care attitude, squandering our special talent until it no longer exists, as Lord Byron did, as Malcolm Lowry did, as many others in the arts, athletics, sciences, and in the public arena have. In my own ethnicity, two Irishmen, Timothy Leary in psychology and F. Scott Fitzgerald in literature come to mind.
It concerns me the way people are cavalierly labeled brilliant, gifted, or, indeed, genius. It indicates the patronizing malaise of comparing and competing.
Comparing focuses on the talent of others or what others have at the expense of focusing on our own talent, what we have, and what we might do with it.
Moreover, there is no greater cultural disease than competition.
When we compete in an effort to match the talent or genius that others possess, it enslaves and degrades our minds to be synthetic copies of what others are and have achieved. That said “being competitive” is one of the most prevalent and certainly most destructive forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if it becomes obsessive, we turn into dull, imitative, and an insensitive person to our own unique gifts. Mediocrity is the price we pay for this mania to measure up to someone else’s talent, which results, ultimately, in burning ourselves out.
Often people stereotype us by saying, “You are just like Dick/Jane.” By doing this, they assist us in this debilitating competitive and comparative programming.
Parents, friends and peers can induce us into the competitive process until it becomes habitual behavior. We go out for sports or for the band or glee club or this or that activity with little insight into our uniqueness. Likewise, we launch ourselves into a career in medicine, science, engineering, accounting, or law with little enthusiasm until one day we find ourselves locked in to it for life.
Then, being competitive grows into a habit. We leave initiative, imagination, originality and spontaneity behind in order to fit in, while convincing ourselves this is what I always wanted to be, when we know it is a lie. We have only this one life to live. Yet, without a second thought, far too frequently, we will our careers to the highest flatterers. Meanwhile, our secret love atrophies in the closet of our mind.
Those that we construe as genius have another agenda:
(1) They don’t focus on what is “in” or “out” or what is the prescribed orbit to get ahead.
(2) They do not contaminate their aspirations to be everything to everybody and nothing to themselves.
(3) On the contrary, they follow their bliss.
Unfortunately, the habit of competing is so widespread that many people firmly believe it is the “Law of Nature.” Competition is frequently praised as a great virtue to be developed by everyone. This lies at cross-purposes to breathing life into one’s own unique talent and frustrates relationships with others because of the envy of what they are and have at the expense of developing one’s own gifts.
The moment our focus is on imitating and emulating the model of others is the moment we move away from our own genius. I am a writer. I have been a writer since I was a little boy of five-years-old, a dreamer, a wonderer, an idealist; a person who often wrote little notes on envelopes, margins of books, magazines or newspapers of my thoughts and feelings, perceptions of how everyday things influenced or provoked me. I have even gone to the very dangerous and questionable business of putting these ideas into print, flawed as they are, as imperfect as they are, sometimes as supercilious as they are, inaccurate as they might prove to be, and, indeed, as repetitive as they often are. Yet, I do it. Why? That will be the subject of the second part of “genius.”
See Dr. Fisher’s books and articles on his website: www.fisherofideas.com.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
COLD SHOWER NO. 3 -- WHAT IS CORPOCRACY?
COLD SHOWER™
WHAT IS CORPOCRACY?
No. 3
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 1, 2008
_____________
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
_____________
QUESTION:
I’ve read several of your books, and am still confused about the meaning of a word you use repeatedly, and that word is “corpocracy.” What exactly is corpocracy?
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
I am sorry for your confusion. It is true that I often refer to “corpocracy” in my essays, and it appears as well in “Work Without Managers” (1990), “The Worker, Alone!” (1995), “Six Silent Killers” (1998) and “Corporate Sin (2000),” or four of my nine published books. These books are building blocks designed to create a narrative of what I see wrong with our corporate structure and why.
I THE AMERICAN DISEASE – CORPOCRACY!
Stated simply, I see “corpocracy” as manifesting the dysfunctional aspect of today’s corporate centralized authority. The corporate structure is the fatal flaw to organization that persists past its prime. Permit me to explain.
While I was an executive in Brussels, Belgium for Honeywell Europe Ltd., I came across an article in a German magazine, Wirtschaft Woche (Business Week, January 16, 1987), titled “Amerikas Krankheit” (The American Disease). I read it with interest and found it remarkable in identifying ten factors which it labeled “corpocracy”:
(1) Management is insensitive to its employees.
(2) Management is consumed with company politics at the expense of productivity.
(3) Secretiveness is the measure of company communication.
(4) The principle product of work is paperwork.
(5) Endless meetings are the “way,” when in doubt, call a meeting.
(6) An obsessive internal focus is maintained as potential markets are ignored.
(7) Short term planning and thinking are preferred to embracing challenges – plan, plan and plan some more!
(8) Individual initiative is not supported – you never know where it might lead!
(9) Management has isolated itself from employees by building mahogany towers between them.
(10) A “covert” hostility to innovation is maintained while overtly praised.
The article went on to say that the American corporation was running rampantly out of control. It observed that conduct formerly confined to government bureaucracies had become pervasive across American business, commerce, industry, education, and religious institutions.
II STUMBLING ON THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM
It so happened that since 1984 I had been collecting my thoughts on the corporate organization in some forty engineering notebooks. This was a forced discipline on me that became surprisingly natural and spirited. How I came to engage in this activity centers around a keynote speech I gave for Honeywell’s Department of Defense customers in Clearwater, Florida in March 1984. I was an organization/industrial psychologist with Honeywell’s Avionics division at the time. The theme of the conference was “employee empowerment” celebrated through “participative management.”
The title of my speech was “Participative Management: An Adversarial Point of View.” In my daily observations, I found participative management a charade and empowerment a sham, and provided book, chapter and verse why it was so. I nearly got fired, but instead was instructed to keep these notebooks as part of my penance.
Reexamining these notebooks in 1987 after reading this German article I discovered my findings dovetailed with its conclusions. I knew I was on to something. It turned out that these notebooks would give birth to the breakthrough classic, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A View from the Trenches (1990), and launch my career as a writer in this genre.
III THE GENESIS OF ORGANIZATION
“Corpocracy,” or society as bureaucratic organization had replaced the simple life and pastoral domesticity of the nuclear family and rural society by the end of World War II. A new day and a new military/industrial complex were taking hold that would be reflected in everything.
With that change, institutional society, as it was known, hit a historical snag. Corporate farms replaced ancestral farms, machines replaced farm hands, mom and pop small businesses were swallowed into corporations, and these in turn swallowed into larger corporations, the same in industry, education and the church. Worth was now measured in quantity, not quality. Communities and states bragged about how their populations were exploding. Automobiles got bigger; houses got bigger; indeed, people got bigger, as bigger was always better. The corporate pyramid grew taller with more and more levels of management.
Meanwhile, jobs of workers got smaller. Everyone had a smaller piece of the action. Worker control of work disappeared. A workplace of 4,000 employees would have 400 or more managers-supervisors who made the big bucks and got the majority of the perks.
Routine became dogma. Workers did everything a certain way because it had always been done that way. In Brussels, the European headquarters for Honeywell Europe dutifully generated detailed sales reports and issued them every month to the affiliates. These reports were never read, despite the man-hours dedicated to them. Several other bureaucratic reports had a similar fate.
The pervasive routine noted in the German article I saw routinely established in Europe as well as the United States. I came to describe this routine as “non-thinking thinking to do non-doing doing of non-thing things”. Workers went along with the pointless drill because their heart, after all, wasn’t in their work. They were working for a paycheck not for the love of what they did.
An assignment dramatized this to me. I did an intervention where a small facility of some 320 workers and 80 managers were struggling to stay in business. The 80 managers worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week to find the solution to remaining viable, while the 320 workers worked their 40 hours, went home without a smidgeon of concern whether the operation made it or not.
Stated otherwise, 80 self-appointed saviors of the company operated without the support, input, or involvement of the other 320. Yes, 80 people were observed pushing the great stone of Sisyphus up the slope, while four times that number stood by and watched laughing through their teeth. “It’s not our problem” was the symphonic buzz, “management got its tit in the ringer. Let management get it out!” So glib. So righteous. So comfortable in their ignorance. These workers suffered from the “American Disease” of corpocracy, but were located in Switzerland.
You cannot charge these workers with being irresponsible when they were clearly nonresponsible. How many companies have folded across this land and other lands with such thinking?
IV ORGANIZED FOR ANOTHER TIME
We are not designed for survival.
When power and authority are centrally located, as they are today, should that center be flawed, the entire organization collapses in on itself no matter how much effort to the contrary. We have seen this in the subprime debacle, FEMA and Katrina, bribery in government, vice in the church, fraud in education, and corruption in virtually every institution of society without exception.
A strong central authority has come to represent the weakness of the corporate structure. If it is flawed, the weakness extends out in concentric rings to the peripheral aspects of that organization. That said the Secretary of the Treasurer of the Bush Administration wants to make the Federal Reserve stronger and more centralized in the panic of “Now!” The dollar is dropping, oil prices rising, jobs are disappearing, and once again, the thinking is predictable: more power and authority to be designated to manage the problem.
The last time such a policy was mounted was during the Great Depression, a very different time. It is difficult to get beyond the hard wiring in our brains when the best minds of our society are stuck, as this would suggest.
We are in a new age. The progression has reached the end of its tether and must rediscover its essence by a peculiar circular route:
(1) The Industrial Revolution saw America move away from a pastoral and agricultural society in which authority was decentralized and small communities were dotted across the landscape to a society of large centralized work centers in metropolitan areas.
(2) For the past fifty years, we have been in a post-industrial society in which the corporation completed the movement from decentralized to centralized power and authority.
(3) This functioned well before, during, and immediately after World War II.
(4) Centralized authority grew in concert with the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War.
(5) The United States military/industrial complex was not seriously challenged until the late 1970s.
(6) Throughout the 1980s in a panic mode corporate America grabbed hold of any idea that would right itself and reestablish its dominance.
(7) Corpocracy evolved as corporate society continued to do, believe, and behave essentially as it had always behaved.
(8) Then a revitalized Europe and an emerging Japan, Inc. and South East Asia cut into the competitive advantage of the United States.
(9) We are now in the post-post Industrial Revolution and Electronic Age.
(10) Cottage industries have been shooting up in the tens of thousands every month.
(11) On-line universities have more students than traditional universities.
(12) “Printing-On-Demand” (POD) publishers are publishing more books today than traditional publishers.
(13) More than 100,000 pay phones are being removed every month across Western society as few people use pay phones now that cell phones are so common.
(14) Workers don’t need supervisors to tell them how they are doing. They have electronic readouts that score their work.
(15) Workers can text message their standing; the same with students in school their grades.
(16) With the electronic connections that exist in every walk of life, there is little need for a strong central authority.
(17) Power and authority not only can be distributed throughout the system, but must be redistributed for appropriate action to be taken on a timely basis.
(18) We have reached the point in which everyone must become a leader of what they do or no one is.
(19) The Electronic Age is decentralizing activities while calling for interdependent responses to routine as well as crisis situations.
(20) Managers are atavistic and the hierarchical organization is anachronistic.
(21) The time for change, dramatic and radical, is now.
(22) There are no secrets anymore.
When the German article came out, it highlighted the obvious. Corporate America was off its track, running harder and harder but making little progress because it had left its steel rails. That is when “corpocracy” set in. Unfortunately, it is not only an American Disease, but also a Western Society Disease.
V A CASE IN POINT
Corpocracy has conditioned us to be passive and nonresponsive, silent and safe hires, going along to get along, doing what we are told even when we know it is wrong, keeping our nose clean and out of trouble, not being a whistle blower when we discover corruption, not reporting somebody seen misusing or stealing company property, or somebody withholding important information to a project.
Corpocracy has led to worker cynicism with workers bringing their bodies to work but leaving their minds at home.
It is counterintuitive to suggest that the corporate design is anachronistic; that corporate society has overstayed its functional life; that this has led to corpocracy.
To illustrate, I once told the director of a department of sixty people that he didn’t need his ten manager-supervisors. He looked at me aghast, “How would we operate?”
I answered, “Better than you’re operating now.”
A nice man, he was literally dumbfounded by such a suggestion. He could not see getting anything done without all these overseers of work.
Well, he was wrong. These were professionals. In one section of his operation, there were seven Ph.D.’s. They were all treated as if children suspended in terminal adolescence waiting for instructions from above, which incidentally, were by people who had little knowledge of their discipline. It resulted in chaos.
These ten manager-supervisors, whom I describe here, took in $750,000 in salaries and benefits. It was the 1980s and they were essentially paper pushers and meeting holders, both now essentially replaced by electronic records and conferences.
VI WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM OUR ENEMIES
Another writer registered concern that Islam and its jihad could one day take over our way of life. I don’t think so, not if we learn important lessons from how this movement operates.
The Western belief is that if we could only take out Osama bin Laden the international jihad would collapse, and peace would be restored throughout the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What the terrorist movement should teach us is the wisdom of decentralization. There couldn’t be a looser confederation than this jihad. Yet, it has confounded the single super power of the world.
Consider this:
(1) There is no strong central authority with this jihad, although we like to identify certain members of the jihad as occupying this authority.
(2) We have erroneously looked at Islam as a group and failed to recognize these renegades are only a small splinter of the total Islam population.
(3) The best equipped, most technological advanced and electronically sophisticated military the world has ever known has failed to subdue this poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped, and relatively small insurgency movement.
(4) The reason is obvious.
(5) The jihad has mastered the wisdom of decentralization where the passion of individuals is the highest possible, along with the willingness to sacrifice their lives for the cause.
(6) The jihad’s only advantage is the knowledge that it can move swiftly and stealthily without the encumbrances of a lethargic, complex and complicated multilevel sophisticated organization of apparatchiks carrying out decisions made half a world away.
(7) The Roman Army made similar mistakes when the Visigoths and Germanic tribes sacked Rome.
(8) Rome refused to demand sacrifices of its Roman citizens, and instead entertained them in the coliseum.
(9) The Roman Army failed to adjust its military to deal effectively with these barbarians from the north and paid dearly for it.
(10) Rome fell.
(11) The Dark Middle Ages followed.
This elaboration on “corpocracy” is meant to show that a reluctance to learn from our enemies is not new, but has tracked man throughout history. Time will only tell if we will become unstuck and learn from our enemies.
Check out other essays by Dr. Fisher on his website: www.fisherofideas.com, where all his books are also available for purchase.
WHAT IS CORPOCRACY?
No. 3
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 1, 2008
_____________
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
_____________
QUESTION:
I’ve read several of your books, and am still confused about the meaning of a word you use repeatedly, and that word is “corpocracy.” What exactly is corpocracy?
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
I am sorry for your confusion. It is true that I often refer to “corpocracy” in my essays, and it appears as well in “Work Without Managers” (1990), “The Worker, Alone!” (1995), “Six Silent Killers” (1998) and “Corporate Sin (2000),” or four of my nine published books. These books are building blocks designed to create a narrative of what I see wrong with our corporate structure and why.
I THE AMERICAN DISEASE – CORPOCRACY!
Stated simply, I see “corpocracy” as manifesting the dysfunctional aspect of today’s corporate centralized authority. The corporate structure is the fatal flaw to organization that persists past its prime. Permit me to explain.
While I was an executive in Brussels, Belgium for Honeywell Europe Ltd., I came across an article in a German magazine, Wirtschaft Woche (Business Week, January 16, 1987), titled “Amerikas Krankheit” (The American Disease). I read it with interest and found it remarkable in identifying ten factors which it labeled “corpocracy”:
(1) Management is insensitive to its employees.
(2) Management is consumed with company politics at the expense of productivity.
(3) Secretiveness is the measure of company communication.
(4) The principle product of work is paperwork.
(5) Endless meetings are the “way,” when in doubt, call a meeting.
(6) An obsessive internal focus is maintained as potential markets are ignored.
(7) Short term planning and thinking are preferred to embracing challenges – plan, plan and plan some more!
(8) Individual initiative is not supported – you never know where it might lead!
(9) Management has isolated itself from employees by building mahogany towers between them.
(10) A “covert” hostility to innovation is maintained while overtly praised.
The article went on to say that the American corporation was running rampantly out of control. It observed that conduct formerly confined to government bureaucracies had become pervasive across American business, commerce, industry, education, and religious institutions.
II STUMBLING ON THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM
It so happened that since 1984 I had been collecting my thoughts on the corporate organization in some forty engineering notebooks. This was a forced discipline on me that became surprisingly natural and spirited. How I came to engage in this activity centers around a keynote speech I gave for Honeywell’s Department of Defense customers in Clearwater, Florida in March 1984. I was an organization/industrial psychologist with Honeywell’s Avionics division at the time. The theme of the conference was “employee empowerment” celebrated through “participative management.”
The title of my speech was “Participative Management: An Adversarial Point of View.” In my daily observations, I found participative management a charade and empowerment a sham, and provided book, chapter and verse why it was so. I nearly got fired, but instead was instructed to keep these notebooks as part of my penance.
Reexamining these notebooks in 1987 after reading this German article I discovered my findings dovetailed with its conclusions. I knew I was on to something. It turned out that these notebooks would give birth to the breakthrough classic, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A View from the Trenches (1990), and launch my career as a writer in this genre.
III THE GENESIS OF ORGANIZATION
“Corpocracy,” or society as bureaucratic organization had replaced the simple life and pastoral domesticity of the nuclear family and rural society by the end of World War II. A new day and a new military/industrial complex were taking hold that would be reflected in everything.
With that change, institutional society, as it was known, hit a historical snag. Corporate farms replaced ancestral farms, machines replaced farm hands, mom and pop small businesses were swallowed into corporations, and these in turn swallowed into larger corporations, the same in industry, education and the church. Worth was now measured in quantity, not quality. Communities and states bragged about how their populations were exploding. Automobiles got bigger; houses got bigger; indeed, people got bigger, as bigger was always better. The corporate pyramid grew taller with more and more levels of management.
Meanwhile, jobs of workers got smaller. Everyone had a smaller piece of the action. Worker control of work disappeared. A workplace of 4,000 employees would have 400 or more managers-supervisors who made the big bucks and got the majority of the perks.
Routine became dogma. Workers did everything a certain way because it had always been done that way. In Brussels, the European headquarters for Honeywell Europe dutifully generated detailed sales reports and issued them every month to the affiliates. These reports were never read, despite the man-hours dedicated to them. Several other bureaucratic reports had a similar fate.
The pervasive routine noted in the German article I saw routinely established in Europe as well as the United States. I came to describe this routine as “non-thinking thinking to do non-doing doing of non-thing things”. Workers went along with the pointless drill because their heart, after all, wasn’t in their work. They were working for a paycheck not for the love of what they did.
An assignment dramatized this to me. I did an intervention where a small facility of some 320 workers and 80 managers were struggling to stay in business. The 80 managers worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week to find the solution to remaining viable, while the 320 workers worked their 40 hours, went home without a smidgeon of concern whether the operation made it or not.
Stated otherwise, 80 self-appointed saviors of the company operated without the support, input, or involvement of the other 320. Yes, 80 people were observed pushing the great stone of Sisyphus up the slope, while four times that number stood by and watched laughing through their teeth. “It’s not our problem” was the symphonic buzz, “management got its tit in the ringer. Let management get it out!” So glib. So righteous. So comfortable in their ignorance. These workers suffered from the “American Disease” of corpocracy, but were located in Switzerland.
You cannot charge these workers with being irresponsible when they were clearly nonresponsible. How many companies have folded across this land and other lands with such thinking?
IV ORGANIZED FOR ANOTHER TIME
We are not designed for survival.
When power and authority are centrally located, as they are today, should that center be flawed, the entire organization collapses in on itself no matter how much effort to the contrary. We have seen this in the subprime debacle, FEMA and Katrina, bribery in government, vice in the church, fraud in education, and corruption in virtually every institution of society without exception.
A strong central authority has come to represent the weakness of the corporate structure. If it is flawed, the weakness extends out in concentric rings to the peripheral aspects of that organization. That said the Secretary of the Treasurer of the Bush Administration wants to make the Federal Reserve stronger and more centralized in the panic of “Now!” The dollar is dropping, oil prices rising, jobs are disappearing, and once again, the thinking is predictable: more power and authority to be designated to manage the problem.
The last time such a policy was mounted was during the Great Depression, a very different time. It is difficult to get beyond the hard wiring in our brains when the best minds of our society are stuck, as this would suggest.
We are in a new age. The progression has reached the end of its tether and must rediscover its essence by a peculiar circular route:
(1) The Industrial Revolution saw America move away from a pastoral and agricultural society in which authority was decentralized and small communities were dotted across the landscape to a society of large centralized work centers in metropolitan areas.
(2) For the past fifty years, we have been in a post-industrial society in which the corporation completed the movement from decentralized to centralized power and authority.
(3) This functioned well before, during, and immediately after World War II.
(4) Centralized authority grew in concert with the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War.
(5) The United States military/industrial complex was not seriously challenged until the late 1970s.
(6) Throughout the 1980s in a panic mode corporate America grabbed hold of any idea that would right itself and reestablish its dominance.
(7) Corpocracy evolved as corporate society continued to do, believe, and behave essentially as it had always behaved.
(8) Then a revitalized Europe and an emerging Japan, Inc. and South East Asia cut into the competitive advantage of the United States.
(9) We are now in the post-post Industrial Revolution and Electronic Age.
(10) Cottage industries have been shooting up in the tens of thousands every month.
(11) On-line universities have more students than traditional universities.
(12) “Printing-On-Demand” (POD) publishers are publishing more books today than traditional publishers.
(13) More than 100,000 pay phones are being removed every month across Western society as few people use pay phones now that cell phones are so common.
(14) Workers don’t need supervisors to tell them how they are doing. They have electronic readouts that score their work.
(15) Workers can text message their standing; the same with students in school their grades.
(16) With the electronic connections that exist in every walk of life, there is little need for a strong central authority.
(17) Power and authority not only can be distributed throughout the system, but must be redistributed for appropriate action to be taken on a timely basis.
(18) We have reached the point in which everyone must become a leader of what they do or no one is.
(19) The Electronic Age is decentralizing activities while calling for interdependent responses to routine as well as crisis situations.
(20) Managers are atavistic and the hierarchical organization is anachronistic.
(21) The time for change, dramatic and radical, is now.
(22) There are no secrets anymore.
When the German article came out, it highlighted the obvious. Corporate America was off its track, running harder and harder but making little progress because it had left its steel rails. That is when “corpocracy” set in. Unfortunately, it is not only an American Disease, but also a Western Society Disease.
V A CASE IN POINT
Corpocracy has conditioned us to be passive and nonresponsive, silent and safe hires, going along to get along, doing what we are told even when we know it is wrong, keeping our nose clean and out of trouble, not being a whistle blower when we discover corruption, not reporting somebody seen misusing or stealing company property, or somebody withholding important information to a project.
Corpocracy has led to worker cynicism with workers bringing their bodies to work but leaving their minds at home.
It is counterintuitive to suggest that the corporate design is anachronistic; that corporate society has overstayed its functional life; that this has led to corpocracy.
To illustrate, I once told the director of a department of sixty people that he didn’t need his ten manager-supervisors. He looked at me aghast, “How would we operate?”
I answered, “Better than you’re operating now.”
A nice man, he was literally dumbfounded by such a suggestion. He could not see getting anything done without all these overseers of work.
Well, he was wrong. These were professionals. In one section of his operation, there were seven Ph.D.’s. They were all treated as if children suspended in terminal adolescence waiting for instructions from above, which incidentally, were by people who had little knowledge of their discipline. It resulted in chaos.
These ten manager-supervisors, whom I describe here, took in $750,000 in salaries and benefits. It was the 1980s and they were essentially paper pushers and meeting holders, both now essentially replaced by electronic records and conferences.
VI WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM OUR ENEMIES
Another writer registered concern that Islam and its jihad could one day take over our way of life. I don’t think so, not if we learn important lessons from how this movement operates.
The Western belief is that if we could only take out Osama bin Laden the international jihad would collapse, and peace would be restored throughout the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What the terrorist movement should teach us is the wisdom of decentralization. There couldn’t be a looser confederation than this jihad. Yet, it has confounded the single super power of the world.
Consider this:
(1) There is no strong central authority with this jihad, although we like to identify certain members of the jihad as occupying this authority.
(2) We have erroneously looked at Islam as a group and failed to recognize these renegades are only a small splinter of the total Islam population.
(3) The best equipped, most technological advanced and electronically sophisticated military the world has ever known has failed to subdue this poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped, and relatively small insurgency movement.
(4) The reason is obvious.
(5) The jihad has mastered the wisdom of decentralization where the passion of individuals is the highest possible, along with the willingness to sacrifice their lives for the cause.
(6) The jihad’s only advantage is the knowledge that it can move swiftly and stealthily without the encumbrances of a lethargic, complex and complicated multilevel sophisticated organization of apparatchiks carrying out decisions made half a world away.
(7) The Roman Army made similar mistakes when the Visigoths and Germanic tribes sacked Rome.
(8) Rome refused to demand sacrifices of its Roman citizens, and instead entertained them in the coliseum.
(9) The Roman Army failed to adjust its military to deal effectively with these barbarians from the north and paid dearly for it.
(10) Rome fell.
(11) The Dark Middle Ages followed.
This elaboration on “corpocracy” is meant to show that a reluctance to learn from our enemies is not new, but has tracked man throughout history. Time will only tell if we will become unstuck and learn from our enemies.
Check out other essays by Dr. Fisher on his website: www.fisherofideas.com, where all his books are also available for purchase.
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