RESPONSES TO "AUHTOR'S NOTE TO CONFIDENT THINKING"

RESPONSES TO “AUTHOR’S NOTES TO CONFIDENT THINKING”

REFERENCE: This excerpt was sent to a number of readers, along with an explanation of why I write, and why publishing is not my first priority. The text of this “Author’s Note” is recorded on this blog.

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 6, 2009

A woman approached Dr. Samuel Johnson, after he had published the Oxford English Dictionary.

“Dr. Johnson, I’ve uncovered a number of spelling and usage errors in your text. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t explain it, madam, it is a matter of pure stupidity. Please accept my apologies if you can.”

James Boswell (1740 – 1795), author of “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (1791)



A WRITER WRITES:

Jim –

I agree. You write beautifully.

Unfortunately, you don't proofread as well as you write. Maybe more of us would pay attention to what you write if we didn't trip on misspelled words or a word misused. I have tried to point out a few such cases in one of your recent missives.


DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Yes, I could have said "$50 to $200" instead of "$200 to $50," but I was tempting to imply decline. It was not a misprint.

No, I did not mean ''$200 to $250." I was referring to Citicorp and General Motors, which have gone to $1.05 and $0.93 as of yesterday.

GM's sales are down 54 percent for the first two months which if that is not close to its death knell I don't know what is.

Incidentally, I write about GM and other fiascoes in A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007) before any of this meltdown happened.

I did zo

You could rewrite the "one in eight homeowners as this is being written" to read as you suggest: "As this is being written, one in eight homeowners is at least a month behind in their mortgage payments," but I think people understand what I am saying.

I think you're a bit anal here, Burt.

Yes, it was an egregious error to write "precipitately" when I meant "precipitously." Sorry.

Yes, I did mean "the bully pulpit as an "extension" of his personality, and not "extended" as it appears.

Yes, I mean, "everything will turn "out" okay in the end." The "out" was left out by accident. Sorry.

Again, when I write of Whitman: "He believed in unlocking his greatness he would inspire others to do as well...." I don't think I confuse. Does it read better to be broken up?

"He believed in unlocking his greatness. He would inspire others to do as well..." but it carries a different meaning than I intended. Do you see that? I didn't change it for that reason, but I still appreciate the thought.

Now, when we come to the last expression -- "It is one of the ironies of life that it takes more energy to be stuck than to go with the flow" -- I can see the reason for your confusion. You write: "I'm confused. I would have thought that being 'stuck' was going with the flow."

So much for the confusion of our colloquial expressions. You are right. We use the expression in the context you suggest, but I was thinking of the last chapter where I discuss "flow psychology," which has a totally different interpretation. So, I've changed it to read:

"It is one of the ironies of life, as flow psychology has taught us, that it takes more energy to be stuck than to go with the flow."

MORE ON FLOW:

Einstein understood flow. That is how he got beyond Newton seeing himself riding a moonbeam through space. He never allowed himself to be constricted with Western dictums, and so escaped our uptight Western straightjacket thinking.

Over the last two decades, Western psychology has attempted to assimilate Eastern philosophy into its paradigms, and this is another one of them, which makes perfect sense to me, and the reason I've included it. Flow is in. But we cannot escape our anal fixation "going with the flow" meaning "being stuck."

Western psychology tries desperately to have the exactitude of science, when it can't even predict behavior. It is better at developing a jargon of explanation after the fact. Listen to Dr. Phil if you have any doubt.

It is no accident that Eastern religion and philosophy are penetrating Western thought. I have read heavily into Eastern theology and philosophy over the past forty years, or since I've returned from South Africa, finding an ease there that we cannot approximate. Reading and intellectualizing Eastern thought is not living it. They live it without the intellectual baggage.

Baggage is what has gotten us into the economic and ecological mess we're in and baggage is finding us digging ourselves deeper into it. Throwing tons of money at our problems is consistent with the way we are, believing it is the answer, and failing to see the folly in this.

The irony is that the East is attempting to escape its culture and approximate ours, and so it is burrowing with us deeper into the abyss. Go figure.

Traditionally, the East has been comfortable with its myths as myths, whereas we attempt to make our myths historically true. I know this is a sensitive area to you, but Jesus is real in my imagination and doesn't have to be all that they would have him be.

With the East, you can have one God or a thousand gods, or no God, and the religious principles still hold up. We try to make religion as exact as science and mathematics, and psychology is no less guilty of this.

Einstein has written about the limits of mathematics. The great man has a sense of humor about natural law and first principles. Few of his colleagues were so inclined.

As of late, and I have no idea why, I am reading heavily into early Christianity and find very cunning and not so cunning but persistent voices created many of the myths that I've been told to believe as true as the sun rises and sets. It now occurs to me that I'm essentially an invention of these myths.

Thomas Aquinas attempted to bridge this gap, and I've always liked this sentence in the "Summa Theologiae." I'm paraphrasing here but it went something like this:

"Philosophy examines the supernatural order in the light of reason, and theology examines the supernatural order in the light of revelation. Although reason is used in theology, revelation does not fall into the province of philosophy. Philosophy cannot contradict theology because truth cannot contradict truth."

He saw two kinds of knowledge in the future: that which related to revelations, which would be the province of theology, and that which dealt with natural law, which reason and philosophy could handle. The result of this insight would one day be known as "science."

Seven hundred and twenty-five years later, we have not made much improvement on this. Aquinas was a Westerner but attempted to balance two worlds without denying either. The East doesn't feel the necessity of balancing anything. They are comfortable simply with "what is."

We have never reached that level because the East is adult and we are reluctant to cross into that maturity. Perhaps the West is too young.

CONFIDENT THINKING, without trying to be pedantic, is the product of forty years of reading and thinking and experiencing, until "it" has blended into my hemoglobin.

By the way, I wrote all of this -- much clearer the first time -- and lost it, but I rewrote it and this is what has come up.

My love to you and Ruth,

Always be well,

Jim


A WRITER FROM EUROPE WRITES:

Jim

In today's world things have drastically changed. This is also a concern of art and literature.

You might not like it -- as I don't like it either -- but it is a fact and one has to face it. There is little chance of an artist being "discovered" anymore.

One has to be made "known" or "popular," that is, one has to be merchandised. Products have to be marketed in order to be successfully sold. So it is with the "soft" products of artists and writers as well.

I know several well recognized artists and some successful writers, mainly not scientific ones, but playwrights for films, authors of children books, and thrillers.

Believe it or not -- they all have a staff of people. They have literary agents, public relations managers, press and other media connectors, designers who package and promote and lobby them like merchandise. These are powerful people.

I was told that without this support system there is no way for artists and writers to succeed. In addition, these artists and writers have to become socially involved with publishers and critics and keep closely connected to them.

This might sound terrible and crazy to you. But it is reality nowadays. As you said, you are writing because you must and not for becoming famous -- and that's great.

Don't expect any more unless you want to become part of the rat race like the ones I am describing here.

Be always well,

Manfred


DR. FISHER'S RESPONDS:


Manfred,

God love you, you're right on the money. I know this is all true, and you are also right, I'm not interested in it. That is my lot and life. I have an agent that believes in me, and we'll see what he comes up with, but that does not discount a word of what you have said. It is all true.

Good hearing from you and give our love to Gerda,

Be always well,

Jim