BRAVE NEW WORLD IT IS NOT!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 28, 2008
REFERENCE: A friend writes:
I find this article fascinating: http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/2008/05/27/uk-teens/. This is Capitalism 2.0 in the flesh - something I didn't invent (sadly), but that I preach actively now. Our global economy is transforming, and I think it's a wonderful thing.
Now let me play my own Devil's Advocate: (a) This is England. Those people still live in trees, from what I understand (never been there myself). London may be the new leader in international banking, but the rest of the UK economy has a lot to learn from ours. (b) These are teenagers. They'll out-grow it; this is just a phase. (c) They won't work for unethical companies? Good for those companies! Have you managed a person under 25 lately?
All of that is fair: the British economy doesn't exactly set our trends. Kids do indeed get more practical and less idealistic as they mature. And how much influence do you really think these kids will have on their parents' investments? But it still heartens me. It indicates a trend.
As top brass at Johnson & Johnson dubbed it in the '50s, this will motivate Enlightened Self-Interest: companies will start to cater to this trend, and the world will benefit.
______________________
MY RESPONSE:
Ted,
I've not read the article, but have read Gene's and Frank's comments with interest. I'm sure the article can't improve on Aldous Huxley's book of the same title, which is still relevant today.
You will recall in Huxley's "Brave New World" it is the year 632 After Ford. The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center takes a group of new students on a tour of the plant where human beings are being turned out by mass production.
Huxley published the book in 1932 and had the misfortune of dying the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 to vanish from conscience and notice without a pause.
Having spent a great deal of time in England, dealing with such folks as those at ICI Ltd., while acting as a director for Honeywell Europe Ltd. in the late 1980s, and prior to that living and working with the Brits in South Africa to form a new company in the late 1960s, their comments resonate with me in a peculiar way.
In South Africa, warm beer off the shelf is part of the Brit's ritual -- I cover this somewhat in the novel-in-progress -- and this for a person that was before and after South Africa a teetotaler, not because of religious persausion but because of an Irish ancestry of want-ta-be's along with a penchant for control.
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, "Love in the Time of Cholera," the nephew says he wants to be rich like his uncle. His uncle replies, "I am a simple poor man who happens to have money."
A Brit would never say or think that. A Brit would rather speak well, dress well and reflect nostalgic empire and maintain its reflection than work. That is my assessment after forty years of breaking bread with Brits on the continent and in South Africa.
Now, the Afrikaner, on the other hand, would prefer the comfort and company of his own people, working hard and living well without the accouterments of, shall we say "ostentation and flamboyant style"? An Iowan can relate to the Afrikaner.
All my technical people in South Africa were Afrikaner, all my sales people, and the managing director of the company had gone to public school, but not university. They all spoke with the soothing diction and the noticeable flair of movie stars, even dressed like them with their ascots, sports jackets, as the artful histrionics and expected depth of such performers.
Brits knew how to hold their tea cups, and ate with splendid manners, but strangely, with a terrible need to please and be well thought of.
I've taken a break from my novel to write this because WE HAVE BECOME LIKE THE BRITS.
Pomp and circumstance mean more to us now than substance, as the shortest distance between two points has become, not a straight line, but an obsessive focus on ends at the expense of means. We don't want to go there; we want to be there, now!
My 12-year-old granddaughter shared her private school annual with me, where there is an article on "achievement" at any expense. The article claims in student surveys that 90 percent of grammar and high school students admit to cheating, and that 80 percent of college graduates from "high end" colleges and universities (translated Ivy League) admit that cheating to get the best jobs is a matter of routine.
We have become a shallow empire, a leaderless society, still imitating our illustrious cousins, who treat life as a passive if not vicarious experience.
Notice the draconian measures taken for European football (soccer) tournaments where spectators live out their lives vicariously and passionately, identifying their team's success or failure with their own. Sound a little like the NFL?
Passivity has become the pathology of normalcy. This disease expresses itself in taking soap operas seriously, and being glued to computers, cell phones, and BlackBerrys.
"American Idol" is national news, and has television's largest audience. Answer the question, why? A half century earlier "Amateur Hour" had a sense of humor and didn't take itself so seriously. Imagine if these "would be" performers spent a fraction of this time and attention to scholarship!
Erich Fromm wrote in "Beyond the Chains of Illusion" (1962):
"Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his mode of production . . . Not the man who has much, but the man who is much is the fully developed, truly human being."
Man's primary motivation is to contribute, not to consume.
Capitalism makes the "wish to have and to use" the most dominant of human desires. A man so dominated is a "crippled genius" with the ambition to acquire overpowering the desire to accomplish.
Could it then be said that man's mission in life is the unfolding of his human potential and not as it would seem neither the quest for private property nor profit?
I write in my "Six Silent Killers: Management's Greatest Challenge" (CRC Press 1998):
"We elect people to public office whom we believe are like us, crippled but not too crippled, part of our herd, but slightly separated from it, who stand out, but not too much.
"Adlai Stevenson was nominated for president twice but never stood a chance. He seemed too European, too sophisticated, too intellectual, and too urbane for our tastes. Yet he was from the Midwestern farm belt.
"The same kind of people ascend the ladder of an organization. Those who rise in our culture are people afraid of negative freedom. Early on, they tested the waters of negative freedom and discovered that positive freedom and fear won out.
"The problem with empowerment can be frightening. In the United Kingdom while I was working in Europe in 1987, the press related how some 60 fifth-form youths (16-year-olds) who had been at a roller-skating party, were robbed of their money, clothes, rings, and other possessions by five young toughs as they left the roller-skating ring. They were commanded to line up, and those who hesitated were kicked into line. The 60 youths obediently followed. A few dominated the many.
"Were the young toughs leaders? No.
"What about the 60 youths?
"Great Britain, it appears, is still very much a repressive society (positive freedom), with children conditioned to be obedient, to be literally kicked into line by the time they are 16. Rebellion is out, as is confrontation. So, to get even, they probably resort to the six silent killers, first at home, then on the job, then in marriage, and beyond.
"It all starts with not being able to show a little fight when young, not being able to discover their own power. These young people were used to being kicked into line -- at school, church, and in the community. Like many elsewhere, including the United States, chances are they will never grow up, lock stepping to terminal adolescence because that is where it is presumed safety resides." (Six Silent Killer, pp. 260 - 261)
I'm sorry. I don't see a "brave new world" at all, and I don't see capitalism leading the way. What is happening in China and India, Indonesia, and elsewhere is not a positive empowering process, to my mind, but creating the calamity and chaos that now seems endemic to our small planet.
Be always well,
Jim
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
BARAK OBAMA'S CHALLENGE IN THE HINTERLAND!
BARAK OBAMA’S CHALLENGE IN THE HINTERLAND
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.© May 25, 2008
______________________
Reference: Joseph Brown is an editorial columnist with The Tampa Tribune. His Sunday article today covered the challenge of presidential candidate Barak Obama, and his message that parents must do their part to change attitudes and the academic performances of their children. I respond to and amplify the ultimate challenge facing this presidential candidate from an Iowan’s perspective.______________________
Joseph,
I'm not writing these things anymore, working on my South Africa novel, but I have a concern. I'm a Republican, and have always voted Republican, but I plan to vote for Barak Obama this time, for many reasons, not least of which is that I am tired of the Republican Party trying to be all things to all people and ended up being a disappointment. Republicanism was going in the right direction with Nelson Rockefeller's liberal Republicanism, which it now is and isn't at once.
One of the reason I've quit writing my missives is that the more than 100 people on my mailing list, movers and shakers as the educated intelligentsia with Iowa roots, spread across the land, continue to look at life through a rear view mirror. They don't say it directly but they dream of a "white America" and an America much like Iowa's only president, Herbert Hoover, and we know where he got us.
The 21st century America is not a white America, not a white-male dominated society, and not a white supremacy society that can conquer all enemies real and imagined. That said Barak Obama has a tough fight ahead winning states in the general election that will not give up the myth.
I sense that in the general election in such states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and even Illinois, not to mention California (where a lot of these Iowa people I refer to now live) the white turnout will be greater than any turnout in the history of general elections, mainly to defeat the Democratic nominee.
I think the only salvation is to meet this challenge by putting Hilary Clinton on the ticket as vice president, where the wives of these macho white males will neutralize their impact.
The vice presidency has no power, as one vice president once said the influence of the office amounts to warm spit.
The Barak Obama campaign has had a lot of energy, has appealed mainly to the young, the disenfranchised, the hopeful, and the lost, but winning the nomination is the easy route, as difficult as it has been, as the real test is driving past the bigots, the hateful, the shameless, and the evil.
Hilary Clinton may have misspoken when she mentioned the California primary, and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, but those of us that would like to see Barak Obama president have had the same fear.
We are a violent society, and have been such from our conception. As good as we are as a people, we have been equally bad, while we choose to see the bad in those who differ with us and not the good.
With all our electronic sophistication, our high lifestyle, our energy and wealth, we still remain a stepsister to the culture of our European cousins.
I was born in Iowa and never been on a farm; my da went through seventh grade and I have degrees all the way through a Ph.D.; my family never made it from payday to payday, and with all my reckless career changes in my life, I've never felt that kind of pressure; and although my family never got outside the United States, I've seen a good bit of the world up close and personal.
My family for all its socioeconomic commonality was able to install discipline, trusts, belief, tolerance and pursuit of excellence in my soul. My parents never helped me with my homework but allowed me to read books and pursue my own interests. I received a good assist from the Irish Roman Catholic Church, which in those days was draconian to a fault with no wiggle room for variance. To this day, I feel indebted to them, parents, priests, nuns and family, for making my life so easy, although I've always worked hard and loved life for it.
My reason for this brief biography is that Barak Obama will never get elected if he cannot bring my kind of people out to vote, and vote for him.
In writing A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007), I paused to remember my mother once telling me that if she were not a Catholic she would hope to have been born Jewish, as Jewish mothers always seem to do the right thing with their children. Well, she was a Jewish mother who happened to be Catholic.
My da, on the other hand, and this was in the 1940s, thought Negroes should be allowed to play baseball in the major leagues at a time when Clinton, Iowa had so few Negroes I seldom saw them on the street.
Barak Obama would be well to go back to Iowa to launch his campaign for the presidency once he wins the nomination.
Iowa is not a manufacturing state, but no state in these United States is in this new century, but Iowa is a state that has heart and courage and thinks as my parents did.
It was not a fluke that he did so well there in the Caucuses. It was clear to Iowans that he was the only leader in the butch at a time in which America is desperate for leadership.
Now, it is for Barak Obama to convince the nation.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.© May 25, 2008
______________________
Reference: Joseph Brown is an editorial columnist with The Tampa Tribune. His Sunday article today covered the challenge of presidential candidate Barak Obama, and his message that parents must do their part to change attitudes and the academic performances of their children. I respond to and amplify the ultimate challenge facing this presidential candidate from an Iowan’s perspective.______________________
Joseph,
I'm not writing these things anymore, working on my South Africa novel, but I have a concern. I'm a Republican, and have always voted Republican, but I plan to vote for Barak Obama this time, for many reasons, not least of which is that I am tired of the Republican Party trying to be all things to all people and ended up being a disappointment. Republicanism was going in the right direction with Nelson Rockefeller's liberal Republicanism, which it now is and isn't at once.
One of the reason I've quit writing my missives is that the more than 100 people on my mailing list, movers and shakers as the educated intelligentsia with Iowa roots, spread across the land, continue to look at life through a rear view mirror. They don't say it directly but they dream of a "white America" and an America much like Iowa's only president, Herbert Hoover, and we know where he got us.
The 21st century America is not a white America, not a white-male dominated society, and not a white supremacy society that can conquer all enemies real and imagined. That said Barak Obama has a tough fight ahead winning states in the general election that will not give up the myth.
I sense that in the general election in such states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and even Illinois, not to mention California (where a lot of these Iowa people I refer to now live) the white turnout will be greater than any turnout in the history of general elections, mainly to defeat the Democratic nominee.
I think the only salvation is to meet this challenge by putting Hilary Clinton on the ticket as vice president, where the wives of these macho white males will neutralize their impact.
The vice presidency has no power, as one vice president once said the influence of the office amounts to warm spit.
The Barak Obama campaign has had a lot of energy, has appealed mainly to the young, the disenfranchised, the hopeful, and the lost, but winning the nomination is the easy route, as difficult as it has been, as the real test is driving past the bigots, the hateful, the shameless, and the evil.
Hilary Clinton may have misspoken when she mentioned the California primary, and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, but those of us that would like to see Barak Obama president have had the same fear.
We are a violent society, and have been such from our conception. As good as we are as a people, we have been equally bad, while we choose to see the bad in those who differ with us and not the good.
With all our electronic sophistication, our high lifestyle, our energy and wealth, we still remain a stepsister to the culture of our European cousins.
I was born in Iowa and never been on a farm; my da went through seventh grade and I have degrees all the way through a Ph.D.; my family never made it from payday to payday, and with all my reckless career changes in my life, I've never felt that kind of pressure; and although my family never got outside the United States, I've seen a good bit of the world up close and personal.
My family for all its socioeconomic commonality was able to install discipline, trusts, belief, tolerance and pursuit of excellence in my soul. My parents never helped me with my homework but allowed me to read books and pursue my own interests. I received a good assist from the Irish Roman Catholic Church, which in those days was draconian to a fault with no wiggle room for variance. To this day, I feel indebted to them, parents, priests, nuns and family, for making my life so easy, although I've always worked hard and loved life for it.
My reason for this brief biography is that Barak Obama will never get elected if he cannot bring my kind of people out to vote, and vote for him.
In writing A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007), I paused to remember my mother once telling me that if she were not a Catholic she would hope to have been born Jewish, as Jewish mothers always seem to do the right thing with their children. Well, she was a Jewish mother who happened to be Catholic.
My da, on the other hand, and this was in the 1940s, thought Negroes should be allowed to play baseball in the major leagues at a time when Clinton, Iowa had so few Negroes I seldom saw them on the street.
Barak Obama would be well to go back to Iowa to launch his campaign for the presidency once he wins the nomination.
Iowa is not a manufacturing state, but no state in these United States is in this new century, but Iowa is a state that has heart and courage and thinks as my parents did.
It was not a fluke that he did so well there in the Caucuses. It was clear to Iowans that he was the only leader in the butch at a time in which America is desperate for leadership.
Now, it is for Barak Obama to convince the nation.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
Monday, May 12, 2008
MY LAST HURRAH WITH EMAIL MISSIVES!
MY LAST HURRAH!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 7, 2008
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.
Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist (1875 – 1961)
______________________
This missive titled “REALITY CHECK” is my “last hurrah!”
One person has responded with his own reality check:
(1) Trillions of tax dollars for truth, justice, oil, and the American Way in Iraq/Mostly talk for hundreds of thousands refugees and victims in Darfur so as not to anger oil rich Sudanese.
(2) Drug resistant TB on march in Africa as a result of HIV/AIDS
(3) New outbreaks of Dengue Fever on the march.
(4) Malaria making comeback in Central America.
(5) Avian Influenza goes global and year around trying to break out.
“And the stock market,” he points out, “is upset over Yahoo and Microsoft not getting together.”
I wrote him back that we saw problems from different perspectives; that he looks at problems in the macro sense while I look at them in the micro sense. All my missives center upon my impression and perspective from an empirical point of view, or from how these issues impact me directly, and by extensions others as I see them.
I am not a macro issue man, not a politician, not a pundit, but a philosopher of ideas, and I have been since I was five-years-old. My greatest gift is curiosity, not profundity. So, at this late stage, it is doubtful that I will change my stripes.
______________________
My son, the tennis professional in Philadelphia, who claims I’ve never gotten the recognition I deserve, and then he explained the reason. “You write in those high minded prose that don’t descend to the level of the average reader.”
We then commenced to discuss the reality of his experience. He has 24 teaching pros working for him in arguably one of the five premier tennis complexes of the United States, and yet he is not happy although wealthy. He started quoting members of the club with whom he has worked with personally. These men and women are international names in cognitive, behavioral and organization psychology. I confessed I did not know them but knew of their work.
“I read your stuff,” he continued, “and these dudes need it more than I do. They may be brilliant but they are some really screwed up dudes, I’ll tell you. All of them are rich but no more happy than I am.”
“Why should that surprise you, Bobby,” I said, “we are a nation suspended in terminal adolescence, self-indulgent and narcissistic to a fault.”
“I hear you,” he replies, “that describes me. I have never left being a 15-year-old, and yet I’ve made a great deal of money.”
“Money isn’t the answer.”
“Then what is?”
“Health, peace and happiness, and living within the perimeters of your own mind, and not being afraid of the darkness there.”
“Write a book about that. Write a book about coping. I’ll get some of these major dudes in your field to write a blur on it.”
“It’s a good idea.”
“That means you’re not going to do it, are you?”
“No, I’m not, I’ve already written books about that stuff.”
“Yes, you have. I’ve tried to read them, but you piss the reader off reminding him of his darkness and that it’s not easy, and that he’s got to change or nothing happens. People don’t want to hear that stuff. They want to be told it’s easy like that lady on PBS that tells viewers how easy it is to create wealth. She doesn’t offend. You do. You make it hard. They all make it easy.”
“But does anyone change?”
“Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is to sell books and get wealthy doing it.”
“Bobby, I’m not interested in that. People have forgotten the importance of struggle; the importance of failure; the importance of taking risks with themselves, risks that they can control. People have forgotten it is painful to follow your own bliss because doors close, and people torpedo you, but in the end you own what you become because you are not afraid to be.”
“That’s what I’m talking about, a book written just like that.”
“It wouldn’t work, Bobby.”
“Why?”
“Because people are so tied up in things and others’ agendas that they don’t have a clue as to what they would prefer doing, or being, or becoming separate from making money. They think once they have a lot of money nobody can hurt them anymore, but that is not true. They are left with themselves, and money fails to bring either peace or happiness.”
“You haven’t changed in all the years I’ve known you, dad.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re afraid of success.”
“For instance?”
“You’d rather be that idea guy on the shoulder of the giant than the giant.”
“So, you have been paying attention.”
“I’ve been very critical of you for years you know, walking away from Nalco and power and wealth, and sitting there in Harbor Bluffs reading God knows how many esoteric books, playing tennis while your wealth dissipated. Then what do you do? You go back to school.”
“True, but you leave one thing out. I’ve paid attention to life and how I’ve seen it unfold. I’ve seen the cruel, the brutal, and the duplicitous up close. I’ve seen power corrupted. I’ve seen maliciousness. I’ve seen life tarnished by betrayal. Yet, I’ve seen no fight in people to redress these wrongs, or even to call attention to them for fear of losing their jobs.
“I live in an age in which violence is equated with courage on the streets or battlefields when there is almost a total absence of moral courage or emotional courage on any front. I’ve seen men and women pay more attention to how they look then how they think, or what they value.
“Power is not going to respond to me. Power resides in the darkest chambers of the human heart, and it will do anything to retain its edge if so threatened.
“People who are hurting are not going to respond to me because they want an easy out and I provide none. Bobby, I am writing in a vacuum for a generation not yet born.”
“There you go again. Off on a tangent.”
“Yes.”
“Well, happy birthday, anyway.”
______________________
Some of the peripatetic articles that came to me while on my walks that will not be transcribed, some thirty or so include the following:
(1) Are Tattoos Cool?
(2) The Advantages To Being Fired
(3) Why We Are Obsessed With Sex & Violence
(4) And on and on.
______________________
My son has a point. I’ve been taken advantage of by publishers because I am not in the mainstream, represent a discomfort to their readers, there is not a safe genre in which to place my work, and am indifferent to money.
______________________
I once did an intervention of a small high tech company of some 250 employees and gross sales of $10 million. The CEO and owner put me on a retainer after the success of initial interventions in which his employees vented their spleens so as to redirect their energies to the work at hand.
Once production goals were achieved, the CEO discontinued to pay my retainer, and so I sued.
Predictably, not a single employee would say in court what he or she had documented with me. It is the way it is. They feared for their jobs, and he knew it, a brutal man who essentially enslaved his workers, which I would never forget.
______________________
I've learned from that, and have since noted less than the people you can count on the fingers of your hand are willing to take a stand when their dignity and self-worth is abused.
There are no more giants anymore so my son's metaphor is irrelevant.
We have had them in the recent past but many were assassinated or made less than they were by pointing out their humanness. I’ve not looked for giants but for people unafraid to effectively use their inherent ability in a positive sense. I can tell you it is not easy.
One of the things I’ve learned is that your most virulent attackers are likely to have a shortage of competence. It is hard to be competent when you are a pleaser. Most pleasers are obsequious to a fault to the powers that be. They prey on what they perceive as weakness, and that is other pleasers.
Since pleasing others is not central to my being, I’ve run into fences when I was a chemist, when I was a chemical sales engineer, and when I was a corporate executive.
The same proved true when I returned to the university and was almost derailed by a professor on my committee for my master’s degree. He was more political than competent.
I am not advocating my approach to life but simply pointing out how free you can feel when you listen to the music of your own soul rather than seek to be entertained by the music from another's.
______________________
Everyone's life reads like a novel.
When you look at all the parts, you realize it is the novel you expected to write. It has a unique plot and consistency, and has unfolded as you meant it to unfold.
For instance, I’ve had an interest in writing since a little boy. When I retired from Nalco after leaving South Africa in 1969, I acquired a literary agent (The Broome Agency), sending him several short pieces of fiction that I had written.
He was excited. “If I can get even one of these sold to a national magazine, you’ll introduce a new style of writing.” He tried valiantly for more than a year, and never succeeded. I quit writing fiction, and returned to school to get my Ph.D., but not before writing and getting published my first book (Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall 1970).
Confident Selling addressed my philosophy of selling, which was that the critical sale the seller has to make in order to be successful is on "the seller," not the buyer. The rest follows naturally. The book was in print for twenty years.
It would be 33-years before I would write my memoirs as a novel (In The Shadow Of The Courthouse AuthorHouse 2003). Now, 38-years after that first book, and nine books later, I’m returning to writing fiction, a book about South Africa (A Green Island In A Black Sea). Stay tuned!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 7, 2008
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.
Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist (1875 – 1961)
______________________
This missive titled “REALITY CHECK” is my “last hurrah!”
One person has responded with his own reality check:
(1) Trillions of tax dollars for truth, justice, oil, and the American Way in Iraq/Mostly talk for hundreds of thousands refugees and victims in Darfur so as not to anger oil rich Sudanese.
(2) Drug resistant TB on march in Africa as a result of HIV/AIDS
(3) New outbreaks of Dengue Fever on the march.
(4) Malaria making comeback in Central America.
(5) Avian Influenza goes global and year around trying to break out.
“And the stock market,” he points out, “is upset over Yahoo and Microsoft not getting together.”
I wrote him back that we saw problems from different perspectives; that he looks at problems in the macro sense while I look at them in the micro sense. All my missives center upon my impression and perspective from an empirical point of view, or from how these issues impact me directly, and by extensions others as I see them.
I am not a macro issue man, not a politician, not a pundit, but a philosopher of ideas, and I have been since I was five-years-old. My greatest gift is curiosity, not profundity. So, at this late stage, it is doubtful that I will change my stripes.
______________________
My son, the tennis professional in Philadelphia, who claims I’ve never gotten the recognition I deserve, and then he explained the reason. “You write in those high minded prose that don’t descend to the level of the average reader.”
We then commenced to discuss the reality of his experience. He has 24 teaching pros working for him in arguably one of the five premier tennis complexes of the United States, and yet he is not happy although wealthy. He started quoting members of the club with whom he has worked with personally. These men and women are international names in cognitive, behavioral and organization psychology. I confessed I did not know them but knew of their work.
“I read your stuff,” he continued, “and these dudes need it more than I do. They may be brilliant but they are some really screwed up dudes, I’ll tell you. All of them are rich but no more happy than I am.”
“Why should that surprise you, Bobby,” I said, “we are a nation suspended in terminal adolescence, self-indulgent and narcissistic to a fault.”
“I hear you,” he replies, “that describes me. I have never left being a 15-year-old, and yet I’ve made a great deal of money.”
“Money isn’t the answer.”
“Then what is?”
“Health, peace and happiness, and living within the perimeters of your own mind, and not being afraid of the darkness there.”
“Write a book about that. Write a book about coping. I’ll get some of these major dudes in your field to write a blur on it.”
“It’s a good idea.”
“That means you’re not going to do it, are you?”
“No, I’m not, I’ve already written books about that stuff.”
“Yes, you have. I’ve tried to read them, but you piss the reader off reminding him of his darkness and that it’s not easy, and that he’s got to change or nothing happens. People don’t want to hear that stuff. They want to be told it’s easy like that lady on PBS that tells viewers how easy it is to create wealth. She doesn’t offend. You do. You make it hard. They all make it easy.”
“But does anyone change?”
“Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is to sell books and get wealthy doing it.”
“Bobby, I’m not interested in that. People have forgotten the importance of struggle; the importance of failure; the importance of taking risks with themselves, risks that they can control. People have forgotten it is painful to follow your own bliss because doors close, and people torpedo you, but in the end you own what you become because you are not afraid to be.”
“That’s what I’m talking about, a book written just like that.”
“It wouldn’t work, Bobby.”
“Why?”
“Because people are so tied up in things and others’ agendas that they don’t have a clue as to what they would prefer doing, or being, or becoming separate from making money. They think once they have a lot of money nobody can hurt them anymore, but that is not true. They are left with themselves, and money fails to bring either peace or happiness.”
“You haven’t changed in all the years I’ve known you, dad.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re afraid of success.”
“For instance?”
“You’d rather be that idea guy on the shoulder of the giant than the giant.”
“So, you have been paying attention.”
“I’ve been very critical of you for years you know, walking away from Nalco and power and wealth, and sitting there in Harbor Bluffs reading God knows how many esoteric books, playing tennis while your wealth dissipated. Then what do you do? You go back to school.”
“True, but you leave one thing out. I’ve paid attention to life and how I’ve seen it unfold. I’ve seen the cruel, the brutal, and the duplicitous up close. I’ve seen power corrupted. I’ve seen maliciousness. I’ve seen life tarnished by betrayal. Yet, I’ve seen no fight in people to redress these wrongs, or even to call attention to them for fear of losing their jobs.
“I live in an age in which violence is equated with courage on the streets or battlefields when there is almost a total absence of moral courage or emotional courage on any front. I’ve seen men and women pay more attention to how they look then how they think, or what they value.
“Power is not going to respond to me. Power resides in the darkest chambers of the human heart, and it will do anything to retain its edge if so threatened.
“People who are hurting are not going to respond to me because they want an easy out and I provide none. Bobby, I am writing in a vacuum for a generation not yet born.”
“There you go again. Off on a tangent.”
“Yes.”
“Well, happy birthday, anyway.”
______________________
Some of the peripatetic articles that came to me while on my walks that will not be transcribed, some thirty or so include the following:
(1) Are Tattoos Cool?
(2) The Advantages To Being Fired
(3) Why We Are Obsessed With Sex & Violence
(4) And on and on.
______________________
My son has a point. I’ve been taken advantage of by publishers because I am not in the mainstream, represent a discomfort to their readers, there is not a safe genre in which to place my work, and am indifferent to money.
______________________
I once did an intervention of a small high tech company of some 250 employees and gross sales of $10 million. The CEO and owner put me on a retainer after the success of initial interventions in which his employees vented their spleens so as to redirect their energies to the work at hand.
Once production goals were achieved, the CEO discontinued to pay my retainer, and so I sued.
Predictably, not a single employee would say in court what he or she had documented with me. It is the way it is. They feared for their jobs, and he knew it, a brutal man who essentially enslaved his workers, which I would never forget.
______________________
I've learned from that, and have since noted less than the people you can count on the fingers of your hand are willing to take a stand when their dignity and self-worth is abused.
There are no more giants anymore so my son's metaphor is irrelevant.
We have had them in the recent past but many were assassinated or made less than they were by pointing out their humanness. I’ve not looked for giants but for people unafraid to effectively use their inherent ability in a positive sense. I can tell you it is not easy.
One of the things I’ve learned is that your most virulent attackers are likely to have a shortage of competence. It is hard to be competent when you are a pleaser. Most pleasers are obsequious to a fault to the powers that be. They prey on what they perceive as weakness, and that is other pleasers.
Since pleasing others is not central to my being, I’ve run into fences when I was a chemist, when I was a chemical sales engineer, and when I was a corporate executive.
The same proved true when I returned to the university and was almost derailed by a professor on my committee for my master’s degree. He was more political than competent.
I am not advocating my approach to life but simply pointing out how free you can feel when you listen to the music of your own soul rather than seek to be entertained by the music from another's.
______________________
Everyone's life reads like a novel.
When you look at all the parts, you realize it is the novel you expected to write. It has a unique plot and consistency, and has unfolded as you meant it to unfold.
For instance, I’ve had an interest in writing since a little boy. When I retired from Nalco after leaving South Africa in 1969, I acquired a literary agent (The Broome Agency), sending him several short pieces of fiction that I had written.
He was excited. “If I can get even one of these sold to a national magazine, you’ll introduce a new style of writing.” He tried valiantly for more than a year, and never succeeded. I quit writing fiction, and returned to school to get my Ph.D., but not before writing and getting published my first book (Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall 1970).
Confident Selling addressed my philosophy of selling, which was that the critical sale the seller has to make in order to be successful is on "the seller," not the buyer. The rest follows naturally. The book was in print for twenty years.
It would be 33-years before I would write my memoirs as a novel (In The Shadow Of The Courthouse AuthorHouse 2003). Now, 38-years after that first book, and nine books later, I’m returning to writing fiction, a book about South Africa (A Green Island In A Black Sea). Stay tuned!
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
REALITY CHECK! The Inscrutable Engineer, Natural Law, Entropy, Life, Love & Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
REALITY CHECK!
The Inscrutable Engineer, Natural Law, Entropy, Life, Love & Leadership In The Twenty-First Century
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 7, 2008
“From birth, there are subtle forces at work conditioning us to what we will become. Engineers are the prototype of our technological culture. They are more interested in the phenomenon of things than their ambivalent impact on people . . . Engineers are the last to be hired and the first to go. Increasingly, they are being treated as indentured workers, vagabonds with a modem and microprocessor . . . Engineers have a fatal attraction for being punished rather than awarded for excellence . . . Companies always pay them a dollar more an hour than they can afford to quit. They are trapped by conformity but prefer to see it as economic. They fail to be aware of their power.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., “The Lost Soul of the Engineer,” SHORT CIRCUIT News Letter of Engineering Empowerment, Spring 1993.
MYSTIQUE OF THE ENGINEER
A friend of mine, a quintessential engineer with more than 100 patents to his name, sent me a ring bound essay on “Platform for Prevention,” which addresses the issue of anticipating and dealing with problems of engineering maintenance through quality control.
It has been one of my interests to explore the professional engineer’s psyche, who has created this postmodern society of ours, but who rarely benefits from the economic fruits of his creation except obliquely and always modestly.
Tracy Kidder in “The Soul of A New Machine” (1981) traces the activity of a select group of engineers who are prodded and pushed to an impossible schedule to produce the next great electronic toy for the masses in a “culture of innovation.”
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Kidder captures the maddening punishment this engineering team endures, sometimes working 24-hour marathon sessions, to produce a cutting edge microcomputer only to have the team dismantled and shredded once the objective had been accomplished. These engineers were as expendable as day laborers with little fruits or recognition for their creation.
Similarly, Stephen Wozniak, the engineering brains behind Apple, Inc., has long since faded from sight while his entrepreneur partner, Steven Jobs, could never be more prominent as the firm they co-founded continues to soar, and Time magazine names Jobs one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” in its May 12, 2008 issue.
I write in “The Lost Soul of the Engineer”:
“Clearly, the engineer is the preeminent builder of the modern world. He has automated the workplace, ending the factory system. The body of genetic engineering has revolutionized agriculture with biotech laboratories that produce natural products such as vanilla, coconut oil and other staple farm products. A select corps of electronic engineers has created the 24-hour-a-day financial trading system, which in turn enables a truly global economy. The globalization of industry and services now permits multinational corporations to switch production operations from one country to another. This has benefited the power brokers, but where is the engineer’s share of the spoils?” (Short Circuit, 1993, p. 23).
I find the engineer inscrutable. Reading engineering author W. Ross Ashby’s carefully thought out essay on “Platform for Prevention,” with salient information very much relevant to our times, I wonder how many people have read it, will read it, more importantly, how many non-engineering people are likely to understand its message.
It has the taint of engineerlese, the jargon of inclusiveness. People need to be informed as they walk through the grid of life zigzagging between imposing systems and written instructions. They read in their own rhythms, interpreting, thinking and daydreaming their way through work. They have their own ideas about how things should be done, defying procedures and the hieroglyphics of instructions they don’t understand anyway.
These workers are driven by a common will in a network of antidiscipline. It is because of this that important information must be created in the content, context and culture of their moorings if it is to provide the guidance required.
NARROW DOMAIN OF THE ENGINEER
An engineer is unlikely to read fiction and to declare this with righteous pride. What could he possibly learn from “made up stuff”? The power of his discipline is sacred. It defines and protects him from life and non-engineers. He fears fiction may contaminate him with the irrational and aberrant world he despises, a world out-of-control, a world that resists Natural Law and First Principles, a world he would prefer not to exist for the thinking man.
It is the disruptive world “of the other,” the outsider to the engineering discipline, the stranger, the alien, the subversive, the radical. It is this world, unfortunately, where systems of power and thought flourish in creative chaos beyond the controls of the expected where engineers seldom tarry.
The engineer sticks to what can be sensed in the language of logic that is comfortable for him where the chances of being refuted or disputed are between little and none. But all engineering experience, no matter how pristine or isolated, is suffused with the presence of others in a climate of contradiction where the technology one has absorbed, or the language with which one thinks and acts proves derisory.
Engineering is a conformist discipline. Some of its foolproof theories are not as infallible as once thought. Much of the ideas of Newton, embraced with defiance some three hundred years ago, and seldom challenged, have proven suspect, or shelved with the arrival of Albert Einstein, Max Planck and others.
LANGUAGE OF THE COMMON SOUL
My sorrow is that W. Ross Ashby, a gifted engineering thinker, has not addressed his document to the person with sixth grade reading and comprehension skills. Such a reader is not a dunce, but the typical worker, whatever his education, who glances at the headlines of the newspaper if he reads one at all, reads his favorite comics, occasionally does the crossword puzzle, checks the activities of his favorite sport teams, and then just might glance at the op-editorial page. Television and the Internet consume his time.
In practice, I have observed workers on the most sophisticated technology working in clean rooms covered from head to toe with white antistatic sterile protective gear to avert contamination. These same workers seldom read the instruction manuals, but gain insight as to how to proceed from their peers who operate a long way from prescribed procedure.
The “Platform for Prevention” is often a gap between engineerlese and the receptivity of the worker for the information presented.
This worker is fully capable of comprehending what is being presented if it is written in his cultural language, which is not necessarily plain English. There are multiple languages of workers that express their experience that might be some distance from the language of engineers.
Not only must the engineer immerse himself fully in issues of his technology, but in the changing nuances and languages of workers who are meant to build his creations.
WHO STIRS THE DRINK?
There is change in the air. Engineers are the new priesthood of the postmodern world. Like their submissive clerical counterparts of the once dominant ecclesiastical authority of the Church, they are subjugated to a higher and remote authority in Mahogany Row.
Ironically, many engineers have risen to CEO status, only to maintain the traditional power of dissembling corpocracy in the midst of its rupture from reality and society, leaving the engineer suspended in animation. This has led to a disconnect between the creators of technology and the working population of builders.
The grid of “antidiscipline” is everywhere. It is now more apparent as it becomes more extensive. It represents the resistance of a society reduced to things to be managed. While popular procedures are seemingly followed, and workers as manipulated mechanisms of discipline seemingly are conforming, they are doing so in order to evade such mechanisms. In other words, what we see is not what we get. We are experiencing a disconnect between thinking and doing, leading and following. This has led to a society unhinged, floating in leaderless leadership. I write in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007):
“This is all played out with bizarre finality in the engineering community. The modern world is a product of the engineering mind. Yet, while engineers created this world, it does not belong to them. It has been stolen from them.” (p. 113)
Empirical evidence? My first discipline was in chemistry and engineering; my first job was in research and development. Subsequent to that, I was a working field chemical sales engineer and consultant across the United States and abroad. Moreover, I was a corporate executive in international operations for two Fortune 200 companies whose products and technologies were in chemical and electrical engineering technology.
Returning to graduate school after my initial career, I earned my doctorate in organization/industrial psychology, and have been a practicing professional in organizational development (OD) and an author in that genre for three decades.
The point I wish to make here is that engineers, and this document of a “Platform for Prevention” is an elaboration of that premise, is that First Principles and Natural Law not only guide engineers, but everyone. It is the way it is.
LIFE AFTER PEOPLE
The History Channel imagined the earth after people. Using empirical evidence and hard science, it illustrated how synthetic and ephemeral our presence, and how life might appear once people vanished.
The earth will not become barren, but will flourish. Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become “vertical ecosystems” complete with birds, snakes, rodents and plant life. What will not flourish are the monuments to man’s presence.
One small animal may be responsible for bringing down the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant. Rivers will swell, bridges will collapse as iron girders return to iron ore, cement and mortar will crumble into sand and dust, and bricks will return to clay.
The streets and highways will flourish with beasts we’ve never seen on this continent other than in zoos, as the barriers to these places will no longer contain them. Giraffes, hippopotami, lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, leopards, elephants, snakes, and many other breeds of animals will roam the streets and byways scavaging for food, cover and watering holes. Grizzly bears will reappear in California, while herds of buffalo would repopulate the Great Western Plains. Our automobiles would shrivel to piles of dust. Our domestic pets would disappear overtaken by flourishing wildlife. Most records of human existence would fade quickly as if man never stepped foot on this planet.
Trees and exotic plants would spread and their roots would ensnarl homes and workplaces breaking through what once were thought impenetrable walls of fashionable and modest homes in tectonic fashion.
Tens of thousands of residential swimming pools would become spawning places for insects. Once the pools dry up, their walls would crumble as weeds and other plant life punch through their synthetic pores to take possession and bury them from sight.
We already have instances of this scenario.
It is now more than twenty years since the nuclear melt down of the power plant in Chernobyl, Russia, which happened on Saturday, April 26, 1986 at 1:23:58 a.m., local time.
Since the spring of 1990, between 60,000 and 140,000 deaths in the Ukraine and Belarus are attributed to radiation from this accident. Seventy percent of the fallout landed in Belarus affecting 3,600 towns and 2.5 million people. More than 5 million people in this locale suffer today from psychological trauma from this man-made disaster.
Tragic as this is, Chernobyl’s population of more than 50,000 people has vanished. Nature and Natural Law have taken over as man’s replacement.
“Life After People” illustrates what it would be like ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or hundreds of years after man. There would be little evidence of man’s presence after only a century.
Trees and plant life will have swallowed up commercial tracts of buildings while decay would reduce the Eiffel Tower and many skyscrapers to giant hills of rubble. If this seems farfetched, structural engineers recently explained why the Twin Towers in New York City collapsed so quickly once commercial jet liners were flown into them on September 11, 2001.
These NIST experts explained that these towers were designed as framed tube structures, which provided tenants with open floor plans uninterrupted by support columns or walls. These long steel support beams were sprayed with fire resistant paint. This protection turned immediately into dust once hit by the high temperatures of the exploding jet liners. The steel melted, causing the sagging floors to pull inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the columns initiating the collapse of each tower, sending floor-by-floor cascading in a downward spiral like falling dominoes to the ground. It took less than an hour. People trapped in these buildings didn’t have a chance.
Consider the monuments built by the nouveau riche to publicize their new status in a manner to separate them from the less fortunate. I can recall a case of an estate of pristine grandeur that suddenly lost its luster, as the costly diligence of the required attention could no longer be maintained.
This happened to the owner once good fortune took a turn for the worse compounded by his addiction to trophies of affluence. This took the form of luxurious boats and exotic automobiles, elaborate entertainment, and expensive holidays combined with unwise investments. In a short five years, wealth evaporated to be replaced by liabilities with the estate now in various states of being repossessed by Nature.
The ornate electronic entry gate is now red with rust and pealing golden paint. The long winding cement drive, embroidered by a lawn of manicured green, set off by fountains and sculptures, is now fractured with a migraine of snaking cracks and crevices. The grass is now snarled and curled with a growing crop of ubiquitous weeds snuffing out the less muscular seed. The roof to the main house has collapsed in on itself, while the walls are full of the tearing plaster while adorned absurdly with original paintings and sculptures. The doorknobs, light fixtures, and other mundane features need attention, as does the plumbing. It is confirmation of the transitory nature of life without resolute determination.
ENTROPY & LOVE
Alas, if man tarries but for a moment, Nature is ready to replace him. It should give man pause to note what he thinks is, isn’t; and what he thinks isn’t, is, as everything, including himself, returns to its original state in Nature.
This is an over simplistic way to describe “entropy,” which is a complex law of physics and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A state of entropy is one in which there no longer is any energy to do work. When we expire and are reduced to the dust of chemicals, we are in such a state, as is everything else once the energy level is reduced to zero, or a state of stasis.
Matter is energy, as Einstein has proven, and matter can neither be created nor destroyed but only transformed into one form or another. But once it is transformed it is already in a state of decay, or racing to its original form. It led one philosopher to say, “As soon as we are born, we are old enough to die.” It is also the reason the Bible states, “Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.”
This is being formulated on my walk since returning from Minnesota where my wife, “Beautiful Betty” (BB) and I visited our latest grandchild, a girl, only two weeks old, and her twin sisters, who turned three in January, all of whom are lovely beyond belief. We also visited BB’s father in his nursing home, who is 91, and suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Entropy would seem close to him but at a distance from the girls.
The twin girls are so bright, so full of energy, so creative, and so loved by their parents that it made our hearts sing. The twins’ tiny two-week-old sister is quiet, delicate, and loved. It helps that the mother is a trained teacher of preschoolers as is their maternal grandmother.
It had been more than four decades since I had children of my own, and so I was reacquainted with how vulnerable a human life is; and how easily it could be extinguished without constant and loving care. It gave me pause to realize that this is reality. That child in the arms of her parents is as vulnerable and dependent for constant care as is her 91-year-old great grandfather.
BB’s father receives constant attention and monitoring in the nursing home. We observed this as we spent hours at the home every day of our seven-day visit. We saw the manner of care, the recreational activities – he made a birdhouse for us, and the thorough maintenance of the facility -- new carpet throughout, repainted walls and rooms, and a new flat screen television in the main lobby. We also observed the patience of the professional staff in all aspects of dependent care.
We all grow old, infirm, and move toward entropy, but love is a powerful bridge to that inevitable state of deterioration. It is a tribute to society to have such a place as this.
BB played dominoes with her father twice. He won the first games 2 – 1, and on another day, 3 – 2. She tried to play checkers with him but he could not conceive what the game was about as there were no dots or numbers or words on the black and red squares. He could read print in the newspaper, and always noticed his name, Thompson, on a woman’s door as he passed by it in the hall, a woman he does not know.
On another occasion, he was moving along with his walker and stopped at the nurses’ station while I was sitting in the room observing him. The nurse was quite pretty. “I could stand here all day,” he said. The nurse, apparently used to this attention, said with a wave of her hand, “Move on Everett,” and he did.
My father-in-law and this newly born child are at polar extremes of entropy, requiring special attention to survive, but at differing levels of potential energy. He, a private man, prefers his own company to anyone else’s. This we are told by his counselor. Like a child in its innocence, she informs us, he says what comes to mind, which often offends.
He might tell someone they are fat, ugly, too slow, or remind them that they are bald. This could be especially cutting as he is still handsome, strongly built, and healthy with a head of thick white hair. Despite his condition, he has retained his penchant for observation and has not lost his sense of humor.
He told me I needed a shave when he noticed my beard, and told his daughter that I was awfully tall, and had big feet. While BB was checking on his medications with the nurse, he looked about the room at the men watching television. “Did you notice that they’re all bald?”
I said, “Yes, I noticed, but you have a full head of hair.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess it’s because they don’t feed their hair.”
When his daughter returned, I told her what he said. “Did you say that, dad?”
Looking at her he smiled broadly, “My hair grows every time I look at a pretty woman.”
Alzheimer’s has failed to erase his sense of humor.
ENTROPY & LIFE
It had been a blessed but tiring week seeing the new baby, the sparkling twins, their devoted parents, and BB’s father, a reminder of the transitory nature of life. Moreover, we experienced the transitory nature of a midwestern spring with a reluctance to move from winter to spring. We were greeted with a cold rain as we made the sixty miles trek from Princeton to the Minneapolis airport in our rental car.
Once on airside of the terminal, a woman from Winnipeg, Canada, sat down across from us waiting to board NW’s 747. She was on her way to Tampa to visit her daughter and son-in-law. As often happens when around people, I go into a sneezing jag.
“That’s an allergy,” the lady said.
“I don’t think so,” I answered, “it only comes on once in a while.”
“What do you think causes it?”
“I’m allergic to people.”
She laughed. “That’s amusing. It would interest my daughter and son-in-law.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, you see they’re psychologists.”
“So am I.”
“You’re a psychologist?”
“Yes, the Ph.D. kind.”
“So are they.”
“That’s a long haul, many years of study.”
“True.”
“And you don’t like people?”
“It’s why I went into industrial/organization psychology rather than clinical.”
“What’s that?”
“My client is the organization, not the individual. People are just data points in my algorithms.”
She laughed again. “You have quite a sense of humor.”
Remembering the nursing home, my father-in-law, and his quick mouth, I said, “Oh my God! I see what the future is going to be.” Then we were called to board.
DENOUEMENT*
William Faulkner in his Nobel Laureate speech in Sweden in December 1950 said man would not only survive, but would prevail. We experienced some evidence of this declaration on this flight home to Tampa.
The rainy weather in Minneapolis persisted, flooding the tarmac and delaying our takeoff. Once in the air, we experienced turbulence immediately, which not only persisted but also became increasingly unsettling. It continued even as we reached our cruising altitude.
“Something is wrong,” I said more to myself than anyone. BB held my hand. Bad weather is one thing, I thought, but this doesn’t feel right.
Then the pilot captain announced that we would be landing in Milwaukee. This was unscheduled as this was a nonstop flight to Tampa. He promised to explain once we were on the ground, but not before fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars accompanied our plane as it taxied to the terminal.
The mind conjures up all sorts of explanations usually centering on someone must be extremely ill, not wishing to think something is critically wrong with the plane.
The pilot to his credit told us candidly and succinctly that he was having trouble with the rudder and other stabilizing controls, which were not responding to correction, and for that reason, elected to terminate the flight in Milwaukee rather than continue. In that admission, he demonstrated a powerful brand of service leadership.
There were the understandable “oh’s” and “ah’s” to this announcement. He consoled us somewhat by informing us that a fully serviced 747 was in the next bay ready to take us on to Tampa.
Two hours later, with him as pilot, but with a different crew, we arrived safely in Tampa after a trouble free flight. I thanked the pilot and his crew, and God for our safe return. Unfortunately, other passengers seemed too preoccupied to express gratitude. They were tired; it was early Sunday morning. They may have missed connecting flights. Yet, it is hard to imagine once safe on the ground to be so distraught, especially after what had transpired. It is incredible and regrettable but not surprising.
People return to self-interest once they shed the anxiety of missing that possible bode of extinction from a manmade machine.
______________________
I read a fanciful novel ("Power Play" by John Finder) while in Minnesota. It is about executive intrigue and the quest for lighter materials of composite construction to replace aluminum in more fuel-efficient aircraft. A competitor’s plane went down of such construction. A lowly materials engineer discovered why.
The book captivated me because it touched many sensitive areas of my training in chemistry and engineering, my experience as a corporate executive, and my OD interventions as a psychologist.
The hero of the novel is this materials engineer in the bowels of the organization. He is invited to an offsite of the airline’s elite executive corps to make a presentation of his findings. You can imagine the hostility he encounters. That said it is his decisiveness, cunning and smarts that saves the day when the unexpected occurs, proving the company leadership completely inept.
The finale was his declining of an invitation to join the CEO’s executive team. He knew where power truly resides.
______________________
The pilot of our aircraft did a courageous thing. At the mercy of his discretionary powers, he made the right decision expeditiously, diplomatically, and decisively. At no point did his passengers become inordinately anxious. His prudence cost NW Airlines money, but he preserved its reputation.
He epitomized Faulkner’s boast of service leadership, not from the NW Air Lines Board Room, nor from the CEO’s executive staff, but from gut wrenching leadership in the heat of the moment, where leadership truly resides in this twenty-first century.
______________________
*Dr. Fisher sent a “Letter of Appreciation” to Richard Anderson, CEO, NORTHWEST/KLM Air Lines (May 2, 2008) to acknowledge this pilot’s discretionary leadership for Flight No. 440: Minneapolis-to-Tampa, April 24-25, 2008.
The Inscrutable Engineer, Natural Law, Entropy, Life, Love & Leadership In The Twenty-First Century
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 7, 2008
“From birth, there are subtle forces at work conditioning us to what we will become. Engineers are the prototype of our technological culture. They are more interested in the phenomenon of things than their ambivalent impact on people . . . Engineers are the last to be hired and the first to go. Increasingly, they are being treated as indentured workers, vagabonds with a modem and microprocessor . . . Engineers have a fatal attraction for being punished rather than awarded for excellence . . . Companies always pay them a dollar more an hour than they can afford to quit. They are trapped by conformity but prefer to see it as economic. They fail to be aware of their power.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., “The Lost Soul of the Engineer,” SHORT CIRCUIT News Letter of Engineering Empowerment, Spring 1993.
MYSTIQUE OF THE ENGINEER
A friend of mine, a quintessential engineer with more than 100 patents to his name, sent me a ring bound essay on “Platform for Prevention,” which addresses the issue of anticipating and dealing with problems of engineering maintenance through quality control.
It has been one of my interests to explore the professional engineer’s psyche, who has created this postmodern society of ours, but who rarely benefits from the economic fruits of his creation except obliquely and always modestly.
Tracy Kidder in “The Soul of A New Machine” (1981) traces the activity of a select group of engineers who are prodded and pushed to an impossible schedule to produce the next great electronic toy for the masses in a “culture of innovation.”
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Kidder captures the maddening punishment this engineering team endures, sometimes working 24-hour marathon sessions, to produce a cutting edge microcomputer only to have the team dismantled and shredded once the objective had been accomplished. These engineers were as expendable as day laborers with little fruits or recognition for their creation.
Similarly, Stephen Wozniak, the engineering brains behind Apple, Inc., has long since faded from sight while his entrepreneur partner, Steven Jobs, could never be more prominent as the firm they co-founded continues to soar, and Time magazine names Jobs one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” in its May 12, 2008 issue.
I write in “The Lost Soul of the Engineer”:
“Clearly, the engineer is the preeminent builder of the modern world. He has automated the workplace, ending the factory system. The body of genetic engineering has revolutionized agriculture with biotech laboratories that produce natural products such as vanilla, coconut oil and other staple farm products. A select corps of electronic engineers has created the 24-hour-a-day financial trading system, which in turn enables a truly global economy. The globalization of industry and services now permits multinational corporations to switch production operations from one country to another. This has benefited the power brokers, but where is the engineer’s share of the spoils?” (Short Circuit, 1993, p. 23).
I find the engineer inscrutable. Reading engineering author W. Ross Ashby’s carefully thought out essay on “Platform for Prevention,” with salient information very much relevant to our times, I wonder how many people have read it, will read it, more importantly, how many non-engineering people are likely to understand its message.
It has the taint of engineerlese, the jargon of inclusiveness. People need to be informed as they walk through the grid of life zigzagging between imposing systems and written instructions. They read in their own rhythms, interpreting, thinking and daydreaming their way through work. They have their own ideas about how things should be done, defying procedures and the hieroglyphics of instructions they don’t understand anyway.
These workers are driven by a common will in a network of antidiscipline. It is because of this that important information must be created in the content, context and culture of their moorings if it is to provide the guidance required.
NARROW DOMAIN OF THE ENGINEER
An engineer is unlikely to read fiction and to declare this with righteous pride. What could he possibly learn from “made up stuff”? The power of his discipline is sacred. It defines and protects him from life and non-engineers. He fears fiction may contaminate him with the irrational and aberrant world he despises, a world out-of-control, a world that resists Natural Law and First Principles, a world he would prefer not to exist for the thinking man.
It is the disruptive world “of the other,” the outsider to the engineering discipline, the stranger, the alien, the subversive, the radical. It is this world, unfortunately, where systems of power and thought flourish in creative chaos beyond the controls of the expected where engineers seldom tarry.
The engineer sticks to what can be sensed in the language of logic that is comfortable for him where the chances of being refuted or disputed are between little and none. But all engineering experience, no matter how pristine or isolated, is suffused with the presence of others in a climate of contradiction where the technology one has absorbed, or the language with which one thinks and acts proves derisory.
Engineering is a conformist discipline. Some of its foolproof theories are not as infallible as once thought. Much of the ideas of Newton, embraced with defiance some three hundred years ago, and seldom challenged, have proven suspect, or shelved with the arrival of Albert Einstein, Max Planck and others.
LANGUAGE OF THE COMMON SOUL
My sorrow is that W. Ross Ashby, a gifted engineering thinker, has not addressed his document to the person with sixth grade reading and comprehension skills. Such a reader is not a dunce, but the typical worker, whatever his education, who glances at the headlines of the newspaper if he reads one at all, reads his favorite comics, occasionally does the crossword puzzle, checks the activities of his favorite sport teams, and then just might glance at the op-editorial page. Television and the Internet consume his time.
In practice, I have observed workers on the most sophisticated technology working in clean rooms covered from head to toe with white antistatic sterile protective gear to avert contamination. These same workers seldom read the instruction manuals, but gain insight as to how to proceed from their peers who operate a long way from prescribed procedure.
The “Platform for Prevention” is often a gap between engineerlese and the receptivity of the worker for the information presented.
This worker is fully capable of comprehending what is being presented if it is written in his cultural language, which is not necessarily plain English. There are multiple languages of workers that express their experience that might be some distance from the language of engineers.
Not only must the engineer immerse himself fully in issues of his technology, but in the changing nuances and languages of workers who are meant to build his creations.
WHO STIRS THE DRINK?
There is change in the air. Engineers are the new priesthood of the postmodern world. Like their submissive clerical counterparts of the once dominant ecclesiastical authority of the Church, they are subjugated to a higher and remote authority in Mahogany Row.
Ironically, many engineers have risen to CEO status, only to maintain the traditional power of dissembling corpocracy in the midst of its rupture from reality and society, leaving the engineer suspended in animation. This has led to a disconnect between the creators of technology and the working population of builders.
The grid of “antidiscipline” is everywhere. It is now more apparent as it becomes more extensive. It represents the resistance of a society reduced to things to be managed. While popular procedures are seemingly followed, and workers as manipulated mechanisms of discipline seemingly are conforming, they are doing so in order to evade such mechanisms. In other words, what we see is not what we get. We are experiencing a disconnect between thinking and doing, leading and following. This has led to a society unhinged, floating in leaderless leadership. I write in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007):
“This is all played out with bizarre finality in the engineering community. The modern world is a product of the engineering mind. Yet, while engineers created this world, it does not belong to them. It has been stolen from them.” (p. 113)
Empirical evidence? My first discipline was in chemistry and engineering; my first job was in research and development. Subsequent to that, I was a working field chemical sales engineer and consultant across the United States and abroad. Moreover, I was a corporate executive in international operations for two Fortune 200 companies whose products and technologies were in chemical and electrical engineering technology.
Returning to graduate school after my initial career, I earned my doctorate in organization/industrial psychology, and have been a practicing professional in organizational development (OD) and an author in that genre for three decades.
The point I wish to make here is that engineers, and this document of a “Platform for Prevention” is an elaboration of that premise, is that First Principles and Natural Law not only guide engineers, but everyone. It is the way it is.
LIFE AFTER PEOPLE
The History Channel imagined the earth after people. Using empirical evidence and hard science, it illustrated how synthetic and ephemeral our presence, and how life might appear once people vanished.
The earth will not become barren, but will flourish. Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become “vertical ecosystems” complete with birds, snakes, rodents and plant life. What will not flourish are the monuments to man’s presence.
One small animal may be responsible for bringing down the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant. Rivers will swell, bridges will collapse as iron girders return to iron ore, cement and mortar will crumble into sand and dust, and bricks will return to clay.
The streets and highways will flourish with beasts we’ve never seen on this continent other than in zoos, as the barriers to these places will no longer contain them. Giraffes, hippopotami, lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, leopards, elephants, snakes, and many other breeds of animals will roam the streets and byways scavaging for food, cover and watering holes. Grizzly bears will reappear in California, while herds of buffalo would repopulate the Great Western Plains. Our automobiles would shrivel to piles of dust. Our domestic pets would disappear overtaken by flourishing wildlife. Most records of human existence would fade quickly as if man never stepped foot on this planet.
Trees and exotic plants would spread and their roots would ensnarl homes and workplaces breaking through what once were thought impenetrable walls of fashionable and modest homes in tectonic fashion.
Tens of thousands of residential swimming pools would become spawning places for insects. Once the pools dry up, their walls would crumble as weeds and other plant life punch through their synthetic pores to take possession and bury them from sight.
We already have instances of this scenario.
It is now more than twenty years since the nuclear melt down of the power plant in Chernobyl, Russia, which happened on Saturday, April 26, 1986 at 1:23:58 a.m., local time.
Since the spring of 1990, between 60,000 and 140,000 deaths in the Ukraine and Belarus are attributed to radiation from this accident. Seventy percent of the fallout landed in Belarus affecting 3,600 towns and 2.5 million people. More than 5 million people in this locale suffer today from psychological trauma from this man-made disaster.
Tragic as this is, Chernobyl’s population of more than 50,000 people has vanished. Nature and Natural Law have taken over as man’s replacement.
“Life After People” illustrates what it would be like ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or hundreds of years after man. There would be little evidence of man’s presence after only a century.
Trees and plant life will have swallowed up commercial tracts of buildings while decay would reduce the Eiffel Tower and many skyscrapers to giant hills of rubble. If this seems farfetched, structural engineers recently explained why the Twin Towers in New York City collapsed so quickly once commercial jet liners were flown into them on September 11, 2001.
These NIST experts explained that these towers were designed as framed tube structures, which provided tenants with open floor plans uninterrupted by support columns or walls. These long steel support beams were sprayed with fire resistant paint. This protection turned immediately into dust once hit by the high temperatures of the exploding jet liners. The steel melted, causing the sagging floors to pull inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the columns initiating the collapse of each tower, sending floor-by-floor cascading in a downward spiral like falling dominoes to the ground. It took less than an hour. People trapped in these buildings didn’t have a chance.
Consider the monuments built by the nouveau riche to publicize their new status in a manner to separate them from the less fortunate. I can recall a case of an estate of pristine grandeur that suddenly lost its luster, as the costly diligence of the required attention could no longer be maintained.
This happened to the owner once good fortune took a turn for the worse compounded by his addiction to trophies of affluence. This took the form of luxurious boats and exotic automobiles, elaborate entertainment, and expensive holidays combined with unwise investments. In a short five years, wealth evaporated to be replaced by liabilities with the estate now in various states of being repossessed by Nature.
The ornate electronic entry gate is now red with rust and pealing golden paint. The long winding cement drive, embroidered by a lawn of manicured green, set off by fountains and sculptures, is now fractured with a migraine of snaking cracks and crevices. The grass is now snarled and curled with a growing crop of ubiquitous weeds snuffing out the less muscular seed. The roof to the main house has collapsed in on itself, while the walls are full of the tearing plaster while adorned absurdly with original paintings and sculptures. The doorknobs, light fixtures, and other mundane features need attention, as does the plumbing. It is confirmation of the transitory nature of life without resolute determination.
ENTROPY & LOVE
Alas, if man tarries but for a moment, Nature is ready to replace him. It should give man pause to note what he thinks is, isn’t; and what he thinks isn’t, is, as everything, including himself, returns to its original state in Nature.
This is an over simplistic way to describe “entropy,” which is a complex law of physics and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A state of entropy is one in which there no longer is any energy to do work. When we expire and are reduced to the dust of chemicals, we are in such a state, as is everything else once the energy level is reduced to zero, or a state of stasis.
Matter is energy, as Einstein has proven, and matter can neither be created nor destroyed but only transformed into one form or another. But once it is transformed it is already in a state of decay, or racing to its original form. It led one philosopher to say, “As soon as we are born, we are old enough to die.” It is also the reason the Bible states, “Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.”
This is being formulated on my walk since returning from Minnesota where my wife, “Beautiful Betty” (BB) and I visited our latest grandchild, a girl, only two weeks old, and her twin sisters, who turned three in January, all of whom are lovely beyond belief. We also visited BB’s father in his nursing home, who is 91, and suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Entropy would seem close to him but at a distance from the girls.
The twin girls are so bright, so full of energy, so creative, and so loved by their parents that it made our hearts sing. The twins’ tiny two-week-old sister is quiet, delicate, and loved. It helps that the mother is a trained teacher of preschoolers as is their maternal grandmother.
It had been more than four decades since I had children of my own, and so I was reacquainted with how vulnerable a human life is; and how easily it could be extinguished without constant and loving care. It gave me pause to realize that this is reality. That child in the arms of her parents is as vulnerable and dependent for constant care as is her 91-year-old great grandfather.
BB’s father receives constant attention and monitoring in the nursing home. We observed this as we spent hours at the home every day of our seven-day visit. We saw the manner of care, the recreational activities – he made a birdhouse for us, and the thorough maintenance of the facility -- new carpet throughout, repainted walls and rooms, and a new flat screen television in the main lobby. We also observed the patience of the professional staff in all aspects of dependent care.
We all grow old, infirm, and move toward entropy, but love is a powerful bridge to that inevitable state of deterioration. It is a tribute to society to have such a place as this.
BB played dominoes with her father twice. He won the first games 2 – 1, and on another day, 3 – 2. She tried to play checkers with him but he could not conceive what the game was about as there were no dots or numbers or words on the black and red squares. He could read print in the newspaper, and always noticed his name, Thompson, on a woman’s door as he passed by it in the hall, a woman he does not know.
On another occasion, he was moving along with his walker and stopped at the nurses’ station while I was sitting in the room observing him. The nurse was quite pretty. “I could stand here all day,” he said. The nurse, apparently used to this attention, said with a wave of her hand, “Move on Everett,” and he did.
My father-in-law and this newly born child are at polar extremes of entropy, requiring special attention to survive, but at differing levels of potential energy. He, a private man, prefers his own company to anyone else’s. This we are told by his counselor. Like a child in its innocence, she informs us, he says what comes to mind, which often offends.
He might tell someone they are fat, ugly, too slow, or remind them that they are bald. This could be especially cutting as he is still handsome, strongly built, and healthy with a head of thick white hair. Despite his condition, he has retained his penchant for observation and has not lost his sense of humor.
He told me I needed a shave when he noticed my beard, and told his daughter that I was awfully tall, and had big feet. While BB was checking on his medications with the nurse, he looked about the room at the men watching television. “Did you notice that they’re all bald?”
I said, “Yes, I noticed, but you have a full head of hair.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess it’s because they don’t feed their hair.”
When his daughter returned, I told her what he said. “Did you say that, dad?”
Looking at her he smiled broadly, “My hair grows every time I look at a pretty woman.”
Alzheimer’s has failed to erase his sense of humor.
ENTROPY & LIFE
It had been a blessed but tiring week seeing the new baby, the sparkling twins, their devoted parents, and BB’s father, a reminder of the transitory nature of life. Moreover, we experienced the transitory nature of a midwestern spring with a reluctance to move from winter to spring. We were greeted with a cold rain as we made the sixty miles trek from Princeton to the Minneapolis airport in our rental car.
Once on airside of the terminal, a woman from Winnipeg, Canada, sat down across from us waiting to board NW’s 747. She was on her way to Tampa to visit her daughter and son-in-law. As often happens when around people, I go into a sneezing jag.
“That’s an allergy,” the lady said.
“I don’t think so,” I answered, “it only comes on once in a while.”
“What do you think causes it?”
“I’m allergic to people.”
She laughed. “That’s amusing. It would interest my daughter and son-in-law.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, you see they’re psychologists.”
“So am I.”
“You’re a psychologist?”
“Yes, the Ph.D. kind.”
“So are they.”
“That’s a long haul, many years of study.”
“True.”
“And you don’t like people?”
“It’s why I went into industrial/organization psychology rather than clinical.”
“What’s that?”
“My client is the organization, not the individual. People are just data points in my algorithms.”
She laughed again. “You have quite a sense of humor.”
Remembering the nursing home, my father-in-law, and his quick mouth, I said, “Oh my God! I see what the future is going to be.” Then we were called to board.
DENOUEMENT*
William Faulkner in his Nobel Laureate speech in Sweden in December 1950 said man would not only survive, but would prevail. We experienced some evidence of this declaration on this flight home to Tampa.
The rainy weather in Minneapolis persisted, flooding the tarmac and delaying our takeoff. Once in the air, we experienced turbulence immediately, which not only persisted but also became increasingly unsettling. It continued even as we reached our cruising altitude.
“Something is wrong,” I said more to myself than anyone. BB held my hand. Bad weather is one thing, I thought, but this doesn’t feel right.
Then the pilot captain announced that we would be landing in Milwaukee. This was unscheduled as this was a nonstop flight to Tampa. He promised to explain once we were on the ground, but not before fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars accompanied our plane as it taxied to the terminal.
The mind conjures up all sorts of explanations usually centering on someone must be extremely ill, not wishing to think something is critically wrong with the plane.
The pilot to his credit told us candidly and succinctly that he was having trouble with the rudder and other stabilizing controls, which were not responding to correction, and for that reason, elected to terminate the flight in Milwaukee rather than continue. In that admission, he demonstrated a powerful brand of service leadership.
There were the understandable “oh’s” and “ah’s” to this announcement. He consoled us somewhat by informing us that a fully serviced 747 was in the next bay ready to take us on to Tampa.
Two hours later, with him as pilot, but with a different crew, we arrived safely in Tampa after a trouble free flight. I thanked the pilot and his crew, and God for our safe return. Unfortunately, other passengers seemed too preoccupied to express gratitude. They were tired; it was early Sunday morning. They may have missed connecting flights. Yet, it is hard to imagine once safe on the ground to be so distraught, especially after what had transpired. It is incredible and regrettable but not surprising.
People return to self-interest once they shed the anxiety of missing that possible bode of extinction from a manmade machine.
______________________
I read a fanciful novel ("Power Play" by John Finder) while in Minnesota. It is about executive intrigue and the quest for lighter materials of composite construction to replace aluminum in more fuel-efficient aircraft. A competitor’s plane went down of such construction. A lowly materials engineer discovered why.
The book captivated me because it touched many sensitive areas of my training in chemistry and engineering, my experience as a corporate executive, and my OD interventions as a psychologist.
The hero of the novel is this materials engineer in the bowels of the organization. He is invited to an offsite of the airline’s elite executive corps to make a presentation of his findings. You can imagine the hostility he encounters. That said it is his decisiveness, cunning and smarts that saves the day when the unexpected occurs, proving the company leadership completely inept.
The finale was his declining of an invitation to join the CEO’s executive team. He knew where power truly resides.
______________________
The pilot of our aircraft did a courageous thing. At the mercy of his discretionary powers, he made the right decision expeditiously, diplomatically, and decisively. At no point did his passengers become inordinately anxious. His prudence cost NW Airlines money, but he preserved its reputation.
He epitomized Faulkner’s boast of service leadership, not from the NW Air Lines Board Room, nor from the CEO’s executive staff, but from gut wrenching leadership in the heat of the moment, where leadership truly resides in this twenty-first century.
______________________
*Dr. Fisher sent a “Letter of Appreciation” to Richard Anderson, CEO, NORTHWEST/KLM Air Lines (May 2, 2008) to acknowledge this pilot’s discretionary leadership for Flight No. 440: Minneapolis-to-Tampa, April 24-25, 2008.
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