MADNESS, SOCIETY IS CAUGHT STANDING ON ITS HEAD SPINNING LIKE A TOP!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 28, 2009
“Life in contemporary society is like an open-air lunatic asylum with people cutting and spraying their grass (to deny untidiness, hence lack of order, hence lack of control, hence their death), beating trails to the bank with little books of figures that worry them around the clock (for the same reason), ogling bulges of flesh, bent over steering wheels and screeching around corners, meticulously polishing their cars, trimming their hedges, giving out parking tickets, saluting banners of colored cloth with their hand on their heart, killing enemies, carefully counting the dead, missing, wounded, probable dead, planning production curves that will absolutely bring about the millennium in thirty-seven years (if quotas are met), filling shopping carts, nailing up vines (and spraying them), and all this dedicated activity takes place within the din of noise that tries to defy eternity: motorized lawn mowers, power saws, electric clipping shears, powered spray guns, huge industrial machines, jack hammers, automobiles, and their tires, giant jets, electric shavers, motorized toothbrushes, dishwashers, clothes washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners. This is truly obsessive-compulsive on the level of the visible and the audible, so overpowering in its total effect that it seems to make psychoanalysis a complete theory of reality.”
Ernest Becker, “The Birth and Death of Meaning” (1971), p. 149, written in 1963 during the Vietnam War.
* * *
THE MADNESS OF NORMALCY
Carlos Ruiz Zafon in his novel “The Shadow of the Wind” has a character say, “The only opinion that holds court is prejudice. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That’s the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior. It’s pure biology.”
Novelists provoke; social anthropologists describe (see Ernest Becker quote above). .
Their incisive revelations complement each other to reconcile the fundamental contradiction to life between behavior and belief, action and rhetoric, confidence and doubt, blind obedience to social authority and personal loyalty to experience. Society, author Becker (1925 – 1974) insists, fears more the death of meaning than the death of the body itself. He sees us repressing this fear in evasive activity.
This tragic comedy gives one the impression society is stuck standing on its head spinning like a top unable to move off the dime because it keeps repeating the same errors failing to learn from experience. Philosopher Alan W. Watts describes this “forward inertia” as having our foot to the floor on the accelerator and break at once, burning up rubber and going nowhere. It was why I wrote “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007). We seem to have a tendency to stay the same, ignore the changes and to leave the future up to manipulators.
Niall Ferguson’s PBS “Ascent of Money” shows this in a financial history of the world. The housing bubble, the stock market plunge, the global economic meltdown, and shady financial dealings go back as far as John Law’s financial manipulations in France in the early 1700s to the Enron debacle to the high jinx of 2007 – 2008 with Fanny Mae and Freddie Max, Lehman Brothers, AIG going belly up, to the Ponzi schemes of Bernard Madoff to the frantically conceived and delivered stimulus package to bail out of Wall Street firms “too big to fail” to the automotive industry that never seems to get it, and so the beat goes on.
Leadership has become leaderless as style has replaced substance and correction, contribution. Those in charge are winging it but with elaborate algorithms and well-schooled staffs. This is the madness of normalcy.
* * *
Political journalist Robert Woodward, who has written four books on George W. Bush during his presidency, was recently talking to Charlie Rose on his PBS show about the president, Barak Obama. Rose asked Woodward to assess the new president to date. After a pensive pause, the author spoke in that level staccato of his giving the president high marks for his confidence, clarity of thought and rhetoric, but failing to see this aptitude translating into practical actions. “I still have little sense of his center of gravity,” he concluded. Unfortunately, Rose didn’t explore this observation.
Under the best of circumstances, our center of gravity determines our equilibrium, our equilibrium gives order to our thoughts, and our thoughts give rise to behavior that answers the perennial question: “Who am I?” Self-knowledge is necessary to understand how self and society are woven out of the structure of meaning. It is difficult to experience equilibrium when “existential identity” gets in the way of "who we are."
The Woodward interview took place before the recent commotion at the Cambridge (Massachusetts) home of Harvard Professor Henry Louise Gates, Jr. Dr. Gates returned from China and had to break into his own home, as the front door was stuck, only to have a neighbor call “911” with the police answering the call, leading to the arrest of the jet lagged tired professor “for disturbing the peace.”
Days later President Obama was holding a news conference on his push for a new comprehensive health program, when asked about the incident. He said Skip Gates was a friend, and that the police acted stupidly. The top has been spinning out of control ever since with equilibrium but a myth.
In an obvious way, the incident revealed Woodward’s concern for the president’s center of gravity. The president’s remark captured the essence of a clash of color in a society that likes to think it has moved beyond racial subjectivity and social stigma. The tension between class and race remains with us for reason. Society has been turned upside down and inside out with some of the most powerful people now people of color. That said “existential identity” smolders under the surface of the most sophisticated for past sins of discrimination. This can break through the patina of the most controlled minds, the president’s included.
* * *
Jewish philosopher Yirmiyahu Yovel provides some perspective on this in his new book “The Other Within” (2009). It is about the Spanish Marranos, former Jews forced to convert to Christianity in Spain and Portugal some 600 years ago. The author uses this to describe a subjectivity that emerged leading to split identity and giving birth to what we now call “modernity.”
His story begins during Holy Week in 1391 in Spain in the Jewish quarter of Seville with the “forced conversion of Jews to Christianity.” According to Yovel, these converts could not commit themselves wholeheartedly to any religion. Those who wanted to be Christian could not achieve a natural integration into Catholicism since their belief was an act of will, which is often severed from the person’s actual life. As for those who yearned for Judaism, they could not return to it openly without risking death or going into exile. This dilemma threw Jewish society in Spain on its head as it gave birth to subjectivity, “existential identity,” and “the other within.”
Dual or split identity led to secularism, and ultimately to “existential identity,” which fifteenth century Spain called “race.”
Jewish converts to Catholicism over the centuries were no longer Jews and yet not Christians other than in mock behavior. Belief was suspended in deference to ritualistic conformity. Jewish Catholics developed “split personalities” externally conforming to the demands of religious authorities but internally being incapable of submitting to the tenets of the religion, thus the split identity.
Yovel sees this self-negation and self-deception giving birth to modernity. Split identity was no longer an exclusive condition known only to Spanish Jews, but was spreading across the world as old compact identities were collapsing and being forced to assimilate new identities and cultures. From the fifteenth century on, Europe was rushing to convert and colonize continents across the globe. Discrete boundaries of race, religion, ethnicity, culture, and national orientation were in crisis. It is no less a problem at a personal level in the most advanced societies today.
Consider the bizarre and tragic life of the late pop singer Michael Jackson. He was a handsome and talented man who happened to be black, living in a dominant white culture. He spent his short life struggling with a split identity. He tried frantically to remold himself into a mirror image of whiteness, revealing in the process the conflict of “the other within,” which could never be resolved. Far from being the exception, the pressure to fit and conform is familiar to all minorities, but also to most members of the working class whatever the color or culture.
* * *
In 1803, president Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase from France for $15 million, which was twice the Federal Budget. It doubled the size of the United States, which now stretched across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. He commissioned Lewis and Clarke to explore the North West Passage. He also forced American Indians from their eastern homes and sacred grounds to be relocated westward. Jefferson saw the United States as a country of mainly whites with European roots speaking English as the common language. This implied conformity “or else.”
Some thirty years later, the relocation of the American Indian westward would be the muscular policy of president Andrew Jackson, but Jefferson established the precedence.
American Indians and African slaves were forced to adopt, assimilate and abide by the white American culture at their peril. Small wonder that scars remain hundreds of years later in these two races. Yet, we register surprise when “the other within” shows its mind in a Freudian slip. This happened with First Lady Michele Obama when it appeared her husband would win the 2008 Democratic Party nomination. This African American lady of distinction said, “I’m finally proud to be an American.” It was no less consequential when President Obama painted the actions of the Cambridge police as “stupid” in the Professor Gates Affair.
Our subjectivity wins out when our existential identity breaks through its conscious barrier. Class and race were on display here but in a society turned upside down, that is, race was personified in an accomplished African American professor and the President of the United States, and class was displayed in the working class white Cambridge police officer, Sergeant Crowley.
* * *
The German philosopher of modernity, Hegel, identified the subjective mind. He claimed it asserts itself against forced assimilation by finding solace in the interior self while resisting the exterior apparatus of culture, religion and behavioral constraints. Hegel saw the Lutheran Reformation as a demonstration of this placing more value on the interior and subjective mind over the external dominance of the Catholic Church.
History has proven him right about the principle of subjectivity but wrong about its character. Modernity has not reconciled the mind to itself with a higher unified identity as he envisioned, but quite the opposite. In terms of religion, Yovel shows modernity has weakened Catholicism, which early Jews were forced to adopt, but also weakened Judaism with those Jews who chose to abandon it. This hasn’t stop here.
With the world melting into a heterogeneous soup, modernity has given rise to inner life, irony, secularism, mysticism, private devotion, atheism, careerism, tolerance, curiosity, and intellectualism, as well as the notion of the self, capitalism and rationality.
Society today is standing on its head spinning like a top feigning self-confidence while affirming it no longer is prostrate before any church or any God. Modernity claims to be liberating, but is it? It would seem that integrity or uprightness is on trial and losing.
The sheer volume of books, articles, films, and the Internet traffic suggest society protests too much. The subjective or interior life has not found peace but has instead demonstrated perennial angst. Too often what appears to be generated is hatred, mistrust, xenophobia, and worse of all, patricide, suicide, homicide and genocide. Terrorism, which is the great fear of the day, is split identity on display. Modernity has become a homeless mind with no resting place in the universe.
People have increasingly retreated into the surreal world of drugs, alcohol, work, profligacy, crime, corruption, duplicity, chicanery, fantasy, and war. A life without boundaries has become like a book without a spine. We make things out to be what they are not.
The thrust to life seemingly is to fit when that is not possible; to belong when it is often at the expense of self realization; to pretend to value what is valueless; to join the herd of true believers going nowhere. In modernity’s quest for itself, it has settled on existential identity. Yovel points out Jews have been on this road of dual identity – of what they are and what they are forced to be – for centuries. This was the impetus to a secular and modern world. Confidence now is in professional powers, worldly knowledge, and careers measured by stature, wealth and influence. This has proven an empty vessel devoid of spiritual content and authentic cultural identity.
Confident man of secular society owes much to what is quintessential Jewish: positive outlook on work, personal effort, learning and money, sober logic, rough Jewish common sense, a prodigal drive for achievement and success, and an emphasis on striving to excel in everything that matters to the host society.
Jewish Diaspora is now a common experience to us all. We are all interlopers, no longer genuine insiders but only a collection of striving outsiders. Race, religion and ethnicity once gave spiritual identity and orientation. This has become seamlessly subsumed under secular “capitalism” with the ascent on money.
Yovel challenges the assumption the Protestant Work Ethic gave rise to capitalism. He sees the forced conversion of Jews to Spanish Christianity as capitalism’s driver as Jewish calculating reason and hyper rationality became common to the Christian West.
* * *
Professor Henry Louise Gates, Jr. racial epithets when treated shabbily by police exhibited “existential identity.” The president’s remark did as well. He happens to be an African American, but with a white mother, while his friend, Dr. Gates, is African American married to a white woman with mixed race daughters, and has white blood himself. You see the conundrum. “Existential identity” is more of a puzzle today between whites and blacks than Catholics and Jews. The irony is that whites and blacks have enriched each other’s culture, but not without conflict and unease.
Yovel’s book, “The Other Within” gives pause to consider modern Western and Jewish identity. One of his philosophical conclusions is that split identity, which The Spanish Inquisition persecuted and modern nationalism considers illicit, is a genuine and the inevitable shape of human existence. Split identity is endemic to us all whatever our color, creed, character or nationality. Yovel is saying Jews are free to accept or reject other more saturated Jewish forms of religion, nationality, community, and culture, but not without a price. This holds true for us who are non-Jews as well.
No external force has its right to impose its “we” on others or to recruit them to its cause if they have a mind to do otherwise. Existential identity is no longer the discriminator it once was although subjectivity remains contentious, as the Professor Gates Affair illustrated. Will these barriers between race and religion continue? Likely. The next six hundred years look to be just as difficult for people to find their center of gravity as the top keeps spinning and people of color increasingly come to dominate the new day.
* * *
Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. is an industrial and organizational psychologist writing in the genre of organizational psychology, author of Confident Selling, Work Without Managers, The Worker, Alone, Six Silent Killers, Corporate Sin, Time Out for Sanity, Meet Your New Best Friend, Purposeful Selling, In the Shadow of the Courthouse and Confident Thinking and Confidence in Subtext. A Way of Thinking About Things, Who Put You in a Cage, and Another Kind of Cruelty are in Amazon’s KINDLE Library.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
PROFESSOR HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. & THE PARADOXICAL DILEMMA BETWEEN THE POLICE AND THE POLICED!
PROFESSOR HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. & THE PARADOXICAL DILEMMA BETWEEN THE POLICE AND THE POLICED!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July, 24, 2009
“A community gets the kind of police it deserves.”
Novelist Joseph Wambaugh
* * *
During the 1970s, I did police consulting as an organizational development (OD) psychologist from New York City to Miami, Florida down the eastern seaboard of the United States. This was during the push for “law and order” across the United States in the aftermath of the chaotic and traumatic 1960s.
Nine months were spent in Fairfax County, Virginia consulting the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) after a riot occurred in Herndon, Virginia, a community on the outskirts of Fairfax City.
A white FCPD officer had shot and killed a young black man in a convenient store after an altercation between them. The black man was a young tough with an attitude, and the police officer had a problem with him.
One day he spotted the subject driving with an expired license, and chased him to a convenient store. There he attempted to arrest the young man as he was taking a beer out of the cooler, turning to everyone and saying, “Have you seen me driving?”
Exasperated, the police office pushed him hard against the cooler; the young man reacted by grabbing the officer’s nightstick to defend himself, hitting the officer on the shoulder. The officer responded by unloading his service revolver on the subject, killing him. A riot followed.
I would write my master’s thesis on my intervention titled “A Social Psychological Study of the Police Organization: The Anatomy of a Riot” (1976).
In that study, I learned that Fairfax County, Virginia was one of the richest counties in the United States, and that more than eighty (80) percent of FCPD officers did not live in the county, policing a jurisdiction outside their socioeconomic identity.
I learned further that the black community of Herndon had been artificially created. Over the years, African Americans had been relocated there from the Washington, DC area. It was now a community of more than a thousand in an otherwise white community. It was also apparent that these relocated families had limited recreational opportunities, other than congregating around a shopping center, which included the convenient store. Add to this the fact that few young people had access to jobs. Of an evening, music would blast from speakers attached to buildings and young people would drive in and out of the shopping center honking their horns and venting their frustrations. Aggravated by this disturbance of the general tranquility, the Herndon community council imposed noise restrictions on the shopping center and curfews on the youth.
It was a recipe for disaster needing only the spark of the white police officer killing the young black man. Spontaneous emotional combustion erupted into rioting, burning down the shopping center, and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. It was then that I entered the fray, and would spend the next nine months in Fairfax County.
Other incidences occurred over this intervention that pointed to the estrangement between police and the policed. It included many unresolved issues, misunderstanding, and buried contempt. It also involved embarrassing mistakes.
There are rows on rows of impressive townhouses in Fairfax County laid out in monotonously mirror images of each other, in street after street, where only diplomats, lobbyists, consultants, and staff members of Congress and the Federal Government can afford to live, making this foreign territory to the FCPD.
On this one night, a drug bust was attempted by unceremoniously crashing through the front door of one of these townhouses where it was assumed a drug dealer resided. It was early in the a.m., and once through the door a baby was heard to cry, and the police officers knew immediately, they were in the wrong house. It was the home of a young lawyer in the Department of Justice, along with his wife and child. Police had the right house number but were on the wrong street. FCPD was sued and the action created quite a brouhaha.
* * *
This was representative of many forays into the police and the policed culminating in a statistical study of several communities complemented with empirical data accumulated in my consultancy and leading to my Ph.D. dissertation titled, “The Police Paradox: Systematic Exploration in the Paradoxical Dilemma of the Police and the Policed” (1978).
My empirical work included spending three months in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Raleigh Police Department (RPD) of 350 officers threatened mutiny if the police chief was not fired. Another condition of their demands was to be allowed to form a police officers’ union. This disregarded the statues of the State of North Carolina, which did not allow city employees to form a union much less strike.
The situation garnered front-page headlines in the newspaper, and television confrontations between police officers and their chief at city council meetings.
* * *
My OD work in Fairfax County revealed that the police department had swelled from 84 police officers a score of years before to 840 officers, and yet it was operated as if it were still a small department. For example, it hand counted complaints while a computer sat idle although it had officers in the field with computer skills.
The routine expected was that every officer spent his initial years in patrol no matter what his skill base before being reassigned to a more appropriate job. The command staff micromanaged to the extreme, which meant this left many tactical and strategic decisions made too late to have crucial impact.
And then there was the matter of training. The police officers, being from essentially other surrounding counties outside Fairfax, carried the baggage of a contrasting culture with conflicting values, expectations, and perceptions. In a word, there was little sense of ownership or mutual understanding.
* * *
With regard to the Raleigh Police Department, a very human factor surfaced. A favorite of the city manager was the sitting police chief. He was a gentleman with a heart condition and was unable to handle the stress of his job. Rather than retire the chief, the city manager devised a plan. To ensure the chief of police received his maximum retirement benefits, the city manager decided to rotate the three senior majors of the department every four months, allowing them to intercede for the police chief as the department’s operating authority. This went on four three years at which time the police chief died of an heart attack before he reached retirement.
The city manager appointed the senior major of the three majors to the position of permanent chief of police. He then resigned, persuading the city council to appoint his assistant as city manager.
The new police chief, to establish his authority, and reduce the threat from the two majors, appointed one major to head administration and the other community service, both staff functions with little operating power.
Line authority in patrol operations is where power resides in a police department. He appointed his sergeant as a new major to head patrol, and put a captain that was a thorn in his side on permanent nights. It was a fatal mistake as all patrol officers rotated shifts and would be exposed to this captain.
The nightshift captain took full advantage of his opportunity by using his psychopathology to poison the minds of the men against their chief with half-truths, innuendoes, and outright lies. He did this for three years, which proved sufficient incubation to reach fruition culminating in the demands for the removal of the chief, formation of a union, or the threat of mutiny by walking off the job.
It was in uncovering this conspiracy and reporting it to the city council that the air was taken out of the mock rebellion. Once everything was made public in the Raleigh Courier Journal, and this may sound melodramatic but true, the police officers saw how they had been duped and obediently fell back into line. The chief of police, for his part, became more responsive to their needs, the offending captain resigned, and transition to a new chief occurred without incident a few years later.
PROFESSOR HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
Cambridge is a community of scholars with Harvard and MIT among the many academic institutions in the immediate environment. I’ve consulted at MIT and know how rich and privileged this community is, especially when it comes to its most distinguished professors. They may not be as wealthy as some in Fairfax County, but they have influence that stretches across the nation and beyond.
At the Charles Stark Draper Laboratories of MIT, I was introduced to this mindset and culture. Moreover, I was constantly reminded subtly and otherwise that I, from the hinterland of the Midwest, was a species apart from members of this august company. I wrote about this experience in A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007). So, I can imagine how incensed Dr. Gates became when confronted by police officers, especially given his work, which, incidentally, is prescient with such expected confrontation and treatment of African Americans.
I know only about this incident from what is written in the newspapers, shown on television, and discussed on such PBS programs as Charlie Rose and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
I mention PBS for reason. It seems obvious that the police officers in question have never viewed one of the many television documentaries of Dr. Gates, or have failed to read any articles or books written by him. He is a professor of African Americans Studies, which of course relates to race. Thus this represents yet another aspect of the great divide between the police and the policed.
* * *
It so happens that I have empathy for Dr. Gates from a personal perspective.
In 1992, while making one of my many trips to Clinton, Iowa to gather material for my book IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), which was about my preteen years in the 1940s, I literally ran into a similar situation.
I was driving through Nashville, Tennessee on the Interstate, late at night and very tired, when I ran into a detour. I got off, made a wrong turn and found myself in a dingy neighborhood, made even more depressing because the sky was overcast and the moon hidden, making me feel as if I was entering a black hole.
Nervous beyond measure, I was driving slowly trying to get my bearings when an unmarked police car cut me off, another drove up perpendicular to my door, and another blocked me from the rear. Next a blinding light hit me in the face and then a loud speaker hurt my ears, shouting at me, “Step out of the car with your hands up!”
Before I could oblige, as I was paralyzed with fear, my door was yanked open, and I was pulled out of my seat, turned around with my arms stretched over my head, pushed against my car, patted down, spun around and asked what I was doing in the neighborhood.
This was before I was asked for my I.D. Those who know me know that when I am emotionally upset, I stutter. Hard as I tried, I could not speak. No words came out of my mouth. Meanwhile, I was surrounded by plain clothed police officers, which I assumed them to be, being badgered with questions, only getting more and more upset, but finally being able to say, “IIIIImmmm llllooost!”
By that time, they had checked my plates, found the car was not hot, that I was from Florida, and then, finally, asked for my I.D. I have no idea how much time expired but it seemed like an eternity. Then when I was finally able to talk, I did what I always do when upset – I gave way too much information. I told about writing a book, and going to Iowa, and being very tired, and not being able to follow the detour signs, on and on. Finally, one police officer said, “Charley, it's not him!”
During this whole ordeal, I never thought of being hostile or confrontational. It never entered my mind. As rebellious as I may seem in my writing, I’ve always had great respect for authority, at home, in school, at church, at work, and in the military. Perhaps I’d be a better writer if I were less disciplined.
This respect was especially demonstrated in the ten years I worked with law enforcement in the 1970s. Spending thousands of hours with police officers, being exposed to what they have to put up with, and experiencing the telling emotional drain to the job, I could not imagine having that kind of restrain day after day after day. Then again, I see police officers as outsiders like myself, and feel a kinship there.
And, yes, I’ve witnessed innocent people being arrested and jailed for tripping over their own mouths. Former Los Angeles Police Department sergeant, Joseph Wambaugh, who turned to writing novels, once said, “A community gets the police it deserves.” I think that is true. If a community is duplicitous, it is going to get suspect law enforcement. If it thinks it is better than the people who serve it, judicious policing will collapse into inappropriate behavior.
What happened at the home of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. the other night is regrettable, and the behavior, possibly on both sides, unfortunate, but inevitable when the divide between police and the policed is allowed to widen.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July, 24, 2009
“A community gets the kind of police it deserves.”
Novelist Joseph Wambaugh
* * *
During the 1970s, I did police consulting as an organizational development (OD) psychologist from New York City to Miami, Florida down the eastern seaboard of the United States. This was during the push for “law and order” across the United States in the aftermath of the chaotic and traumatic 1960s.
Nine months were spent in Fairfax County, Virginia consulting the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) after a riot occurred in Herndon, Virginia, a community on the outskirts of Fairfax City.
A white FCPD officer had shot and killed a young black man in a convenient store after an altercation between them. The black man was a young tough with an attitude, and the police officer had a problem with him.
One day he spotted the subject driving with an expired license, and chased him to a convenient store. There he attempted to arrest the young man as he was taking a beer out of the cooler, turning to everyone and saying, “Have you seen me driving?”
Exasperated, the police office pushed him hard against the cooler; the young man reacted by grabbing the officer’s nightstick to defend himself, hitting the officer on the shoulder. The officer responded by unloading his service revolver on the subject, killing him. A riot followed.
I would write my master’s thesis on my intervention titled “A Social Psychological Study of the Police Organization: The Anatomy of a Riot” (1976).
In that study, I learned that Fairfax County, Virginia was one of the richest counties in the United States, and that more than eighty (80) percent of FCPD officers did not live in the county, policing a jurisdiction outside their socioeconomic identity.
I learned further that the black community of Herndon had been artificially created. Over the years, African Americans had been relocated there from the Washington, DC area. It was now a community of more than a thousand in an otherwise white community. It was also apparent that these relocated families had limited recreational opportunities, other than congregating around a shopping center, which included the convenient store. Add to this the fact that few young people had access to jobs. Of an evening, music would blast from speakers attached to buildings and young people would drive in and out of the shopping center honking their horns and venting their frustrations. Aggravated by this disturbance of the general tranquility, the Herndon community council imposed noise restrictions on the shopping center and curfews on the youth.
It was a recipe for disaster needing only the spark of the white police officer killing the young black man. Spontaneous emotional combustion erupted into rioting, burning down the shopping center, and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. It was then that I entered the fray, and would spend the next nine months in Fairfax County.
Other incidences occurred over this intervention that pointed to the estrangement between police and the policed. It included many unresolved issues, misunderstanding, and buried contempt. It also involved embarrassing mistakes.
There are rows on rows of impressive townhouses in Fairfax County laid out in monotonously mirror images of each other, in street after street, where only diplomats, lobbyists, consultants, and staff members of Congress and the Federal Government can afford to live, making this foreign territory to the FCPD.
On this one night, a drug bust was attempted by unceremoniously crashing through the front door of one of these townhouses where it was assumed a drug dealer resided. It was early in the a.m., and once through the door a baby was heard to cry, and the police officers knew immediately, they were in the wrong house. It was the home of a young lawyer in the Department of Justice, along with his wife and child. Police had the right house number but were on the wrong street. FCPD was sued and the action created quite a brouhaha.
* * *
This was representative of many forays into the police and the policed culminating in a statistical study of several communities complemented with empirical data accumulated in my consultancy and leading to my Ph.D. dissertation titled, “The Police Paradox: Systematic Exploration in the Paradoxical Dilemma of the Police and the Policed” (1978).
My empirical work included spending three months in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Raleigh Police Department (RPD) of 350 officers threatened mutiny if the police chief was not fired. Another condition of their demands was to be allowed to form a police officers’ union. This disregarded the statues of the State of North Carolina, which did not allow city employees to form a union much less strike.
The situation garnered front-page headlines in the newspaper, and television confrontations between police officers and their chief at city council meetings.
* * *
My OD work in Fairfax County revealed that the police department had swelled from 84 police officers a score of years before to 840 officers, and yet it was operated as if it were still a small department. For example, it hand counted complaints while a computer sat idle although it had officers in the field with computer skills.
The routine expected was that every officer spent his initial years in patrol no matter what his skill base before being reassigned to a more appropriate job. The command staff micromanaged to the extreme, which meant this left many tactical and strategic decisions made too late to have crucial impact.
And then there was the matter of training. The police officers, being from essentially other surrounding counties outside Fairfax, carried the baggage of a contrasting culture with conflicting values, expectations, and perceptions. In a word, there was little sense of ownership or mutual understanding.
* * *
With regard to the Raleigh Police Department, a very human factor surfaced. A favorite of the city manager was the sitting police chief. He was a gentleman with a heart condition and was unable to handle the stress of his job. Rather than retire the chief, the city manager devised a plan. To ensure the chief of police received his maximum retirement benefits, the city manager decided to rotate the three senior majors of the department every four months, allowing them to intercede for the police chief as the department’s operating authority. This went on four three years at which time the police chief died of an heart attack before he reached retirement.
The city manager appointed the senior major of the three majors to the position of permanent chief of police. He then resigned, persuading the city council to appoint his assistant as city manager.
The new police chief, to establish his authority, and reduce the threat from the two majors, appointed one major to head administration and the other community service, both staff functions with little operating power.
Line authority in patrol operations is where power resides in a police department. He appointed his sergeant as a new major to head patrol, and put a captain that was a thorn in his side on permanent nights. It was a fatal mistake as all patrol officers rotated shifts and would be exposed to this captain.
The nightshift captain took full advantage of his opportunity by using his psychopathology to poison the minds of the men against their chief with half-truths, innuendoes, and outright lies. He did this for three years, which proved sufficient incubation to reach fruition culminating in the demands for the removal of the chief, formation of a union, or the threat of mutiny by walking off the job.
It was in uncovering this conspiracy and reporting it to the city council that the air was taken out of the mock rebellion. Once everything was made public in the Raleigh Courier Journal, and this may sound melodramatic but true, the police officers saw how they had been duped and obediently fell back into line. The chief of police, for his part, became more responsive to their needs, the offending captain resigned, and transition to a new chief occurred without incident a few years later.
PROFESSOR HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
Cambridge is a community of scholars with Harvard and MIT among the many academic institutions in the immediate environment. I’ve consulted at MIT and know how rich and privileged this community is, especially when it comes to its most distinguished professors. They may not be as wealthy as some in Fairfax County, but they have influence that stretches across the nation and beyond.
At the Charles Stark Draper Laboratories of MIT, I was introduced to this mindset and culture. Moreover, I was constantly reminded subtly and otherwise that I, from the hinterland of the Midwest, was a species apart from members of this august company. I wrote about this experience in A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007). So, I can imagine how incensed Dr. Gates became when confronted by police officers, especially given his work, which, incidentally, is prescient with such expected confrontation and treatment of African Americans.
I know only about this incident from what is written in the newspapers, shown on television, and discussed on such PBS programs as Charlie Rose and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
I mention PBS for reason. It seems obvious that the police officers in question have never viewed one of the many television documentaries of Dr. Gates, or have failed to read any articles or books written by him. He is a professor of African Americans Studies, which of course relates to race. Thus this represents yet another aspect of the great divide between the police and the policed.
* * *
It so happens that I have empathy for Dr. Gates from a personal perspective.
In 1992, while making one of my many trips to Clinton, Iowa to gather material for my book IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), which was about my preteen years in the 1940s, I literally ran into a similar situation.
I was driving through Nashville, Tennessee on the Interstate, late at night and very tired, when I ran into a detour. I got off, made a wrong turn and found myself in a dingy neighborhood, made even more depressing because the sky was overcast and the moon hidden, making me feel as if I was entering a black hole.
Nervous beyond measure, I was driving slowly trying to get my bearings when an unmarked police car cut me off, another drove up perpendicular to my door, and another blocked me from the rear. Next a blinding light hit me in the face and then a loud speaker hurt my ears, shouting at me, “Step out of the car with your hands up!”
Before I could oblige, as I was paralyzed with fear, my door was yanked open, and I was pulled out of my seat, turned around with my arms stretched over my head, pushed against my car, patted down, spun around and asked what I was doing in the neighborhood.
This was before I was asked for my I.D. Those who know me know that when I am emotionally upset, I stutter. Hard as I tried, I could not speak. No words came out of my mouth. Meanwhile, I was surrounded by plain clothed police officers, which I assumed them to be, being badgered with questions, only getting more and more upset, but finally being able to say, “IIIIImmmm llllooost!”
By that time, they had checked my plates, found the car was not hot, that I was from Florida, and then, finally, asked for my I.D. I have no idea how much time expired but it seemed like an eternity. Then when I was finally able to talk, I did what I always do when upset – I gave way too much information. I told about writing a book, and going to Iowa, and being very tired, and not being able to follow the detour signs, on and on. Finally, one police officer said, “Charley, it's not him!”
During this whole ordeal, I never thought of being hostile or confrontational. It never entered my mind. As rebellious as I may seem in my writing, I’ve always had great respect for authority, at home, in school, at church, at work, and in the military. Perhaps I’d be a better writer if I were less disciplined.
This respect was especially demonstrated in the ten years I worked with law enforcement in the 1970s. Spending thousands of hours with police officers, being exposed to what they have to put up with, and experiencing the telling emotional drain to the job, I could not imagine having that kind of restrain day after day after day. Then again, I see police officers as outsiders like myself, and feel a kinship there.
And, yes, I’ve witnessed innocent people being arrested and jailed for tripping over their own mouths. Former Los Angeles Police Department sergeant, Joseph Wambaugh, who turned to writing novels, once said, “A community gets the police it deserves.” I think that is true. If a community is duplicitous, it is going to get suspect law enforcement. If it thinks it is better than the people who serve it, judicious policing will collapse into inappropriate behavior.
What happened at the home of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. the other night is regrettable, and the behavior, possibly on both sides, unfortunate, but inevitable when the divide between police and the policed is allowed to widen.
* * *
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
THE PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US --- SAMPLE OF RESPONSES
THE PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US – SAMPLE OF RESPONSES
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 22, 2009
FROM A NOVELIST
"The times have truly changed and not for the better!"
FROM A MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT
"Sounds like you recently had the joy of encounter.
" Sorry.
"Friends come and go; enemies accumulate. I take some solace in observing that the weasels of the generation before me end their lives alone, in a toxic, self-made sea of enemies. Pox be upon them."
FROM A PROFESSOR AN INTERNATIONAL OD CONSULTANT
"Most interesting insights. I reviewed a series of books a few years ago on the nature of evil in world of organizations.
"Two sources most influenced me, one was written by an old colleague from my graduate days at George Washington University. His name is Guy Adams and his book is” The Nature of Evil in Administrative Systems" a case story of NASA and its original leader Von Braun, an ex SS officer.
"Another favorite is author Scott Peck. He defines evil in his book "People of the Lie.” Peck show how easily it is for a community to shift to a cult and become evil when they put their faith and hope essentially in a lie, which they all have agreed to accept unconditionally.
"Lies or major distortions of reality flourish with psychopaths as you put it so well. It is as important to be aware, as it is to be sure not to rush to judgment. Otherwise, we can fall down that same slippery slope of accepting a lie by failing to challenge our own thinking.
"Those of us gifted with above average brains are often the most susceptible to believing our own press. A skeptical yet inquiring mind should be our default setting in figuring out our own selves. Some people are so believable because they believe totally everything they want and need to believe."
DR. FISHER RESPONDS
No, things – as a whole – have not turned out for the better because we have become increasingly slaves to our electronic systems, which when they crash, leave us paralyzed and literally in the dark.
The sad thing about this is that we are just on the lip of the change process, and are moving in the direction of "machines rule." Absurd! Pick up a copy of WIRE magazine if you have any doubts.
* * *
The second response made me smile. The writer knows my work and me and assumed I was having a bad day. Not true.
I'm still working on my novel of South Africa. The treachery of psychopaths is a continuing undercurrent to that story, and this missive came to me, as I walked and I wrote it down before I forgot it.
As I’ve mentioned before, missives come to me out of the blue without any prompting. They always, of course, have a kernel of thought generated by something else.
My novel of South Africa is about treachery, betrayal, and disclosure, but I sense that renting Patricia Highsmith's filming of her book, "Talented Mr. Ripley" pushed my mind into this particular type of reflection.
It is amazing how novelist are so much more perceptive than trained psychologists when it comes to understanding life’s drama. Highsmith is an anarchist of the grotesque comedy of life. She explores the human heart in the same vein as have Chester Himes and Flannery O’Connor. I suspect I am equally so inclined.
Then another factor walked with me. Novelist Frank McCourt died the other day. He, like me, struggled for years with his quintessential work -- his was a biography ("Angela's Ashes"), while mine is a biographical novel ("Green Island in a Black Sea”).
McCourt lived long enough to publish his work and become an international celebrity, and a wealthy man in his seventies, but without losing his charm and memory of the pathos and wrenching poverty of his youth.
McCourt knew he would hurt people by sharing his truth, yet he had the courage to do it. I know I will surprise people with my novel should it ever be published.
McCourt wrote from the perspective of a little boy in Limerick. I write as a young American executive in colonial splendor in South Africa.
McCourt sublimated his anger into art thus displaced his contempt for the Irish Catholic Church, and Irish society. Images of smothering poverty, a drunken father, a depressed mother and hungry siblings are presented with compassion and humor from the perspective of a little boy by a man in his dotage.
My story displays similar concerns but from a growing understanding of the corruption of corporate society and corpocracy. This is displayed in the context of the myths of a dying Western belief system. My protagonist does this as he leaves his innocence and superstitions behind in 1968 to find himself buried in oblivion and existential angst.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 22, 2009
FROM A NOVELIST
"The times have truly changed and not for the better!"
FROM A MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT
"Sounds like you recently had the joy of encounter.
" Sorry.
"Friends come and go; enemies accumulate. I take some solace in observing that the weasels of the generation before me end their lives alone, in a toxic, self-made sea of enemies. Pox be upon them."
FROM A PROFESSOR AN INTERNATIONAL OD CONSULTANT
"Most interesting insights. I reviewed a series of books a few years ago on the nature of evil in world of organizations.
"Two sources most influenced me, one was written by an old colleague from my graduate days at George Washington University. His name is Guy Adams and his book is” The Nature of Evil in Administrative Systems" a case story of NASA and its original leader Von Braun, an ex SS officer.
"Another favorite is author Scott Peck. He defines evil in his book "People of the Lie.” Peck show how easily it is for a community to shift to a cult and become evil when they put their faith and hope essentially in a lie, which they all have agreed to accept unconditionally.
"Lies or major distortions of reality flourish with psychopaths as you put it so well. It is as important to be aware, as it is to be sure not to rush to judgment. Otherwise, we can fall down that same slippery slope of accepting a lie by failing to challenge our own thinking.
"Those of us gifted with above average brains are often the most susceptible to believing our own press. A skeptical yet inquiring mind should be our default setting in figuring out our own selves. Some people are so believable because they believe totally everything they want and need to believe."
DR. FISHER RESPONDS
No, things – as a whole – have not turned out for the better because we have become increasingly slaves to our electronic systems, which when they crash, leave us paralyzed and literally in the dark.
The sad thing about this is that we are just on the lip of the change process, and are moving in the direction of "machines rule." Absurd! Pick up a copy of WIRE magazine if you have any doubts.
* * *
The second response made me smile. The writer knows my work and me and assumed I was having a bad day. Not true.
I'm still working on my novel of South Africa. The treachery of psychopaths is a continuing undercurrent to that story, and this missive came to me, as I walked and I wrote it down before I forgot it.
As I’ve mentioned before, missives come to me out of the blue without any prompting. They always, of course, have a kernel of thought generated by something else.
My novel of South Africa is about treachery, betrayal, and disclosure, but I sense that renting Patricia Highsmith's filming of her book, "Talented Mr. Ripley" pushed my mind into this particular type of reflection.
It is amazing how novelist are so much more perceptive than trained psychologists when it comes to understanding life’s drama. Highsmith is an anarchist of the grotesque comedy of life. She explores the human heart in the same vein as have Chester Himes and Flannery O’Connor. I suspect I am equally so inclined.
Then another factor walked with me. Novelist Frank McCourt died the other day. He, like me, struggled for years with his quintessential work -- his was a biography ("Angela's Ashes"), while mine is a biographical novel ("Green Island in a Black Sea”).
McCourt lived long enough to publish his work and become an international celebrity, and a wealthy man in his seventies, but without losing his charm and memory of the pathos and wrenching poverty of his youth.
McCourt knew he would hurt people by sharing his truth, yet he had the courage to do it. I know I will surprise people with my novel should it ever be published.
McCourt wrote from the perspective of a little boy in Limerick. I write as a young American executive in colonial splendor in South Africa.
McCourt sublimated his anger into art thus displaced his contempt for the Irish Catholic Church, and Irish society. Images of smothering poverty, a drunken father, a depressed mother and hungry siblings are presented with compassion and humor from the perspective of a little boy by a man in his dotage.
My story displays similar concerns but from a growing understanding of the corruption of corporate society and corpocracy. This is displayed in the context of the myths of a dying Western belief system. My protagonist does this as he leaves his innocence and superstitions behind in 1968 to find himself buried in oblivion and existential angst.
Be always well,
Jim
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
THE PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US!
THE PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 21, 2009
”Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,’
Is the immediate jewel of their souls;
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing,
Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of what which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
Shakespeare, “Othello.”
* * *
Of the many psychological gems of Shakespeare, none better describes crushing psychopathology than the treachery of Iago towards Othello. He exploited Othello’s insecurity with regard to his beautiful wife Desdemona, which led to her tragic murder at the hands of her husband.
* * *
This psychopathology has become endemic to our times. In our culture, you are guilty until proven innocent. Not long ago a Hillsborough County Commissioner was handcuffed and led off to jail because he threw his sixteen-year-old son down when he came home at 4 a.m. in the morning with his little brother. The father was enraged not only at the insolence of his son, but also with his corrupting influence on his brother. It was a front-page story in The Tampa Tribune for days with pictures and commentaries of this brutal father, who, incidentally, had a reputation of not only being a fine professional man, but a community leader of the first ranks. Fortunately, a sensible judge dismissed the charges, but the man’s reputation was sullied.
The sixteen-year-old knew the system was geared to support his charge of abuse despite his own lawless and compromising behavior. In his petulant immaturity, he could care less if he sullied permanently his father’s reputation and career. He was pissed.
* * *
In my preteens, I was an altar boy at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Clinton, Iowa. The assistant pastor at the time was a young priest, 27, who I got to know well. I shopped with him for a hi-fi set on one occasion, and on another, I met his family in Davenport and had dinner with them. I remember him and his family fondly to this day. Imagine my shock when he was posthumously accused of child abuse, something I couldn’t imagine, as he couldn’t have treated me with more respect. I am not suggesting that some priests did not abuse children, but I know this priest never did. My wonder is how many psychopaths are among these priest accusers.
* * *
When I was a teenager in the 1950s, if I had come home drunk with my little brother in tow, there is no question in my mind that my da would have decked me. Should I have protested to the media, it would have fallen on death ears. My da wouldn’t have been thought an abusive parent but rather a concerned one
* * *
When I was in college, I knew a psychology major, a young lady that was nice to everyone. She hung out with a lot of students, especially one, whom she tutored doing all but taking his examinations. One day he made sexual advances, which she rejected. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she told him she wasn’t ready for a relationship. He went to her friends in tears, claiming they had been having a clandestine affair for months, and that out of the blue she broke it off. He claimed she said if he told anyone they “had been seeing each other,” she would claim he raped her, and even threatened to go to the police. Her friends believed him, and not her, isolating her from their circle. She eventually dropped out of school.
Notice how this psychopath used a grain of truth, his academic dependence on this young lady, contriving how to compromise her reputation now that he wouldn’t be getting any more help.
* * *
By a set of serendipitous circumstances, of which I’ve written about at some length elsewhere, I jumped from a field manager to an international executive with Nalco Chemical Company in the 1960s. In hierarchical terms, it was the equivalent of jumping four rungs of the corporate ladder in a single promotion. At that level, I was privy to confidential records of my whole career. I was shocked to find some of the most Iagoistical references to me by my former boss, who, obviously, was not over joyed with my rapid rise. Fortunate for me, my new boss looked at my record against these insinuations and half-truths, and rejected them out of pocket.
* * *
Years later, when I was a management psychologist with Honeywell, a young lady came to me for help in acquiring a promotion to a job that seemed perfect for her. I contacted the manager seeking such a person, and he agreed she was what he was looking for. Then, one day he came to me and said, “I can’t take her on. Her boss has serious reservations about her suitability.” She didn’t get promoted. I talked to the young lady, and shared with her my disappointment. Then, I asked out of curiosity, “How does your boss feel about this opportunity?” She told me that her boss was doing everything in her power to make it happen. “She was as surprised as me when I didn’t get the job.”
* * *
Psychopaths sully the reputations of others out of spite, jealousy, envy, cruelty and vengeance, yet such people are not recognized as psychopaths. These evildoers know there is no such thing as cause and effect when it comes to the efficacy of malicious and poison gossip. They know that people will believe the worse in people because they believe the worse in themselves.
* * *
Scandal magazines such as the Enquirer, et al, count on people believing celebrities live scandalous lives, finding vicarious satisfaction in such reportage. How do these magazines get away with this? I’ve already answered that question. Psychopathology has become a norm of our times. Soap operas play on this theme with people sullying the reputation of other people in fictional psychodrama as mid-day entertainment.
Now, we have the creation of “Internet Legends.” They are having a field day with President Barak Obama. People read these and believe them; people, you would otherwise think at least reasonably intelligent, feast on this dribble. It is part of the sickness of our times.
* * *
The psychopaths among us are born liars. No matter what corner they paint themselves into they can lie their way out. They can kill the reputation of someone without remorse because they have a low threshold of anxiety.
Novelist Patricia Highsmith personified this psychopathology in the central character of Tom Ripley in a series of books. Ripley is charming, affectionate, and a mirror image of the qualities he seeks in others, but of necessity and only necessity, he is a murderer. He has an identity crisis and constantly changes to suit his company. The psychological vampire comes out in him when he fears being discovered. He is a doppelganger, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A movie was made of Highsmith’s first Ripley book, “The Talented Tom Ripley” (1999). Little did she know how this twisted character is common amongst us.
* * *
That is the problem. Psychopaths mirror how we want to be seen and therefore we find them engaging, gradually finding ourselves buying into their treachery as if we were naïve. There is no one no matter how astute that is not vulnerable to this madness. Psychopaths make us question our perceptions of others and ourselves.
A common practice is for a psychopathic parent to turn the children against the other parent. This can be fatal as it can turn the mindset of the child away from love and towards hate, crippling and confusing the child in its approach to life, and paradoxically, leading to that child being psycholpathic towards others.
Psychopaths among us have no conscience, no empathy, are pathological liars, manipulative, charming, intuitive, attention seeking, and easily bored. They are narcissistic and this can turn very nasty when they are thwarted.
If you should confront the psychopath, they will quickly turn the tables on you making you seem the psychopath and they the reasonable one. They become the concerned and sane party in the conversation.
No matter how vicious their behavior, once found out and confronted they will admit nothing. Psychopaths don’t really do fear. They mainly do aggression, insinuation, boredom and pleasure. They have an ambulance chaser mentality and delight in coming to the aid of the crippled seeing no irony in the fact that they might well have been the cripplers. Psychopaths get their kicks by having power over other people, manipulating them, inflicting pain, and then playing the role of the comforter. Other people aren’t real to them, just the equivalent of icons in a video game. So beware!
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 21, 2009
”Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,’
Is the immediate jewel of their souls;
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing,
Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of what which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
Shakespeare, “Othello.”
* * *
Of the many psychological gems of Shakespeare, none better describes crushing psychopathology than the treachery of Iago towards Othello. He exploited Othello’s insecurity with regard to his beautiful wife Desdemona, which led to her tragic murder at the hands of her husband.
* * *
This psychopathology has become endemic to our times. In our culture, you are guilty until proven innocent. Not long ago a Hillsborough County Commissioner was handcuffed and led off to jail because he threw his sixteen-year-old son down when he came home at 4 a.m. in the morning with his little brother. The father was enraged not only at the insolence of his son, but also with his corrupting influence on his brother. It was a front-page story in The Tampa Tribune for days with pictures and commentaries of this brutal father, who, incidentally, had a reputation of not only being a fine professional man, but a community leader of the first ranks. Fortunately, a sensible judge dismissed the charges, but the man’s reputation was sullied.
The sixteen-year-old knew the system was geared to support his charge of abuse despite his own lawless and compromising behavior. In his petulant immaturity, he could care less if he sullied permanently his father’s reputation and career. He was pissed.
* * *
In my preteens, I was an altar boy at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Clinton, Iowa. The assistant pastor at the time was a young priest, 27, who I got to know well. I shopped with him for a hi-fi set on one occasion, and on another, I met his family in Davenport and had dinner with them. I remember him and his family fondly to this day. Imagine my shock when he was posthumously accused of child abuse, something I couldn’t imagine, as he couldn’t have treated me with more respect. I am not suggesting that some priests did not abuse children, but I know this priest never did. My wonder is how many psychopaths are among these priest accusers.
* * *
When I was a teenager in the 1950s, if I had come home drunk with my little brother in tow, there is no question in my mind that my da would have decked me. Should I have protested to the media, it would have fallen on death ears. My da wouldn’t have been thought an abusive parent but rather a concerned one
* * *
When I was in college, I knew a psychology major, a young lady that was nice to everyone. She hung out with a lot of students, especially one, whom she tutored doing all but taking his examinations. One day he made sexual advances, which she rejected. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she told him she wasn’t ready for a relationship. He went to her friends in tears, claiming they had been having a clandestine affair for months, and that out of the blue she broke it off. He claimed she said if he told anyone they “had been seeing each other,” she would claim he raped her, and even threatened to go to the police. Her friends believed him, and not her, isolating her from their circle. She eventually dropped out of school.
Notice how this psychopath used a grain of truth, his academic dependence on this young lady, contriving how to compromise her reputation now that he wouldn’t be getting any more help.
* * *
By a set of serendipitous circumstances, of which I’ve written about at some length elsewhere, I jumped from a field manager to an international executive with Nalco Chemical Company in the 1960s. In hierarchical terms, it was the equivalent of jumping four rungs of the corporate ladder in a single promotion. At that level, I was privy to confidential records of my whole career. I was shocked to find some of the most Iagoistical references to me by my former boss, who, obviously, was not over joyed with my rapid rise. Fortunate for me, my new boss looked at my record against these insinuations and half-truths, and rejected them out of pocket.
* * *
Years later, when I was a management psychologist with Honeywell, a young lady came to me for help in acquiring a promotion to a job that seemed perfect for her. I contacted the manager seeking such a person, and he agreed she was what he was looking for. Then, one day he came to me and said, “I can’t take her on. Her boss has serious reservations about her suitability.” She didn’t get promoted. I talked to the young lady, and shared with her my disappointment. Then, I asked out of curiosity, “How does your boss feel about this opportunity?” She told me that her boss was doing everything in her power to make it happen. “She was as surprised as me when I didn’t get the job.”
* * *
Psychopaths sully the reputations of others out of spite, jealousy, envy, cruelty and vengeance, yet such people are not recognized as psychopaths. These evildoers know there is no such thing as cause and effect when it comes to the efficacy of malicious and poison gossip. They know that people will believe the worse in people because they believe the worse in themselves.
* * *
Scandal magazines such as the Enquirer, et al, count on people believing celebrities live scandalous lives, finding vicarious satisfaction in such reportage. How do these magazines get away with this? I’ve already answered that question. Psychopathology has become a norm of our times. Soap operas play on this theme with people sullying the reputation of other people in fictional psychodrama as mid-day entertainment.
Now, we have the creation of “Internet Legends.” They are having a field day with President Barak Obama. People read these and believe them; people, you would otherwise think at least reasonably intelligent, feast on this dribble. It is part of the sickness of our times.
* * *
The psychopaths among us are born liars. No matter what corner they paint themselves into they can lie their way out. They can kill the reputation of someone without remorse because they have a low threshold of anxiety.
Novelist Patricia Highsmith personified this psychopathology in the central character of Tom Ripley in a series of books. Ripley is charming, affectionate, and a mirror image of the qualities he seeks in others, but of necessity and only necessity, he is a murderer. He has an identity crisis and constantly changes to suit his company. The psychological vampire comes out in him when he fears being discovered. He is a doppelganger, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A movie was made of Highsmith’s first Ripley book, “The Talented Tom Ripley” (1999). Little did she know how this twisted character is common amongst us.
* * *
That is the problem. Psychopaths mirror how we want to be seen and therefore we find them engaging, gradually finding ourselves buying into their treachery as if we were naïve. There is no one no matter how astute that is not vulnerable to this madness. Psychopaths make us question our perceptions of others and ourselves.
A common practice is for a psychopathic parent to turn the children against the other parent. This can be fatal as it can turn the mindset of the child away from love and towards hate, crippling and confusing the child in its approach to life, and paradoxically, leading to that child being psycholpathic towards others.
Psychopaths among us have no conscience, no empathy, are pathological liars, manipulative, charming, intuitive, attention seeking, and easily bored. They are narcissistic and this can turn very nasty when they are thwarted.
If you should confront the psychopath, they will quickly turn the tables on you making you seem the psychopath and they the reasonable one. They become the concerned and sane party in the conversation.
No matter how vicious their behavior, once found out and confronted they will admit nothing. Psychopaths don’t really do fear. They mainly do aggression, insinuation, boredom and pleasure. They have an ambulance chaser mentality and delight in coming to the aid of the crippled seeing no irony in the fact that they might well have been the cripplers. Psychopaths get their kicks by having power over other people, manipulating them, inflicting pain, and then playing the role of the comforter. Other people aren’t real to them, just the equivalent of icons in a video game. So beware!
* * *
Saturday, July 18, 2009
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE...TIMELESS IN ITS MAJESTY ... IF I WERE A POET...
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, TIMELESS IN ITS MAJESTY
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 20, 2009
NOTE:
My boyhood friend, Bobby Witt, died August 27, 1990. The shock of his untimely death reminded me of the halcyon days of our youth "In The Shadow of the Courthouse." The four-sided clock in the courthouse tower had bells that rang every half hour. So, we had no excuse, wherever we might be in the community, not to be home on time for meals.
Moreover, we played from sun up to sun set on the courthouse diamond that was laid out for us by Sheriff Ky Petersen and his deputies Chris Stamp and Jim Gaffey.
From 1991 until IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE was published in 2003, I made twelve trips, each of several weeks, researching the book, interviewing scores of people and nearly living in the Clinton County Library viewing microfiche film of The Clinton Herald published during the 1940s when we were boys.
Earlier, as a boy of five, when I lived with my Aunt Annie Dean's on Second Street and Third Avenue North in her tenement apartment house, I would sit on the roof and marvel at the courthouse. I repeated this in 1995 when I sat in my car on Third Street in front of the courthouse and wrote this poem.
James R. Fisher, Jr.
* * *
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE…IF I WERE A POET…
James R. Fisher, Jr.
© 1995
I have never lost my affection for this edifice. It was like a parent that never wavered, never changed. I am sitting here now, reflecting on the fact that it is forty-four years since I have spent any time with my old friend.
If I were a poet, I would give it metaphorical significance, like a giant knight, standing ever at attention to protect my neighborhood from itself and from the dangers outside.
If I were a poet, I would see it as a Greek god, an Adonis, a Zeus, a mighty warrior who never falters from its vigilance.
If I were a poet, I would sing the praise of this frozen music, this enchanting melody which never varies in my head, this quiet dignity, this sculptured perfection, this sensible grace as common as a pair of old shoes.
If I were a poet, I would wonder why we could have such stability, such reasoned continence against the harsh reality of tumultuous change, as it has not varied for me one iota from what it was a half century ago.
If I were a poet, I would remark that the tower and the time and the psychology of its movement is frozen like magic so that wherever I go it is stop time to my mind.
If I were a poet, I would tell the world that it has been so important in making this fumbling, stumbling, bumbling individual called “me,” to always feel a mystical anchor in my roots of being.
If I were a poet, I would exalt its unique character with Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” to dramatize how the earth around may change, but the spirit within remains forever constant.
If I were a poet, I would note that men live and die, but that this structure is immortal because it exists beyond nature.
If I were a poet, I would sit here and wonder as I am now, over the happiness I feel for having the opportunity to once again ponder the regard I hold for it. And finally,
If I were a poet, I would want the world to know of the many lives that this edifice, this sentinel has influenced in the course of my fleeting life. How many young who are now old have been given succor and sustenance, and semblance of order in their lives because they have lived IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 20, 2009
NOTE:
My boyhood friend, Bobby Witt, died August 27, 1990. The shock of his untimely death reminded me of the halcyon days of our youth "In The Shadow of the Courthouse." The four-sided clock in the courthouse tower had bells that rang every half hour. So, we had no excuse, wherever we might be in the community, not to be home on time for meals.
Moreover, we played from sun up to sun set on the courthouse diamond that was laid out for us by Sheriff Ky Petersen and his deputies Chris Stamp and Jim Gaffey.
From 1991 until IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE was published in 2003, I made twelve trips, each of several weeks, researching the book, interviewing scores of people and nearly living in the Clinton County Library viewing microfiche film of The Clinton Herald published during the 1940s when we were boys.
Earlier, as a boy of five, when I lived with my Aunt Annie Dean's on Second Street and Third Avenue North in her tenement apartment house, I would sit on the roof and marvel at the courthouse. I repeated this in 1995 when I sat in my car on Third Street in front of the courthouse and wrote this poem.
James R. Fisher, Jr.
* * *
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE…IF I WERE A POET…
James R. Fisher, Jr.
© 1995
I have never lost my affection for this edifice. It was like a parent that never wavered, never changed. I am sitting here now, reflecting on the fact that it is forty-four years since I have spent any time with my old friend.
If I were a poet, I would give it metaphorical significance, like a giant knight, standing ever at attention to protect my neighborhood from itself and from the dangers outside.
If I were a poet, I would see it as a Greek god, an Adonis, a Zeus, a mighty warrior who never falters from its vigilance.
If I were a poet, I would sing the praise of this frozen music, this enchanting melody which never varies in my head, this quiet dignity, this sculptured perfection, this sensible grace as common as a pair of old shoes.
If I were a poet, I would wonder why we could have such stability, such reasoned continence against the harsh reality of tumultuous change, as it has not varied for me one iota from what it was a half century ago.
If I were a poet, I would remark that the tower and the time and the psychology of its movement is frozen like magic so that wherever I go it is stop time to my mind.
If I were a poet, I would tell the world that it has been so important in making this fumbling, stumbling, bumbling individual called “me,” to always feel a mystical anchor in my roots of being.
If I were a poet, I would exalt its unique character with Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” to dramatize how the earth around may change, but the spirit within remains forever constant.
If I were a poet, I would note that men live and die, but that this structure is immortal because it exists beyond nature.
If I were a poet, I would sit here and wonder as I am now, over the happiness I feel for having the opportunity to once again ponder the regard I hold for it. And finally,
If I were a poet, I would want the world to know of the many lives that this edifice, this sentinel has influenced in the course of my fleeting life. How many young who are now old have been given succor and sustenance, and semblance of order in their lives because they have lived IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.
* * *
Friday, July 17, 2009
THE TRIANGLE OF GROWTH -- TEACHING SMART PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN!
THE TRIANGLE OF GROWTH – TEACHING SMART PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 17, 2009
Reference: I posted the following note on Lou Schuler’s blog, “10,000 Hours? Really?” It was a reaction to Malcolm Gladwell’s book on the same subject. Many people have responded to my note.
DR. FISHER'S COMMENT:
I've just returned from a cruise in Alaska, and posted my observation of that cruise on my website ("Fat Nation, White Noise, Sloppy Language, and Other Observations). I referred in that piece to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, which I found intriguing, not so much for what it purports to advocate, but for the readiness with which readers are inclined to buy into his provocative premise -- 10,000 hours.
In high school I was mainly a four-sport jock, making all-state along the way, also finishing in the top ten percent of my class, but hardly a brain. The valedictorian flattered me by asking that I be his roommate in college. We took all the same college prep courses together so I agreed but had the feeling he would embarrass me to smithereens with his scholarship. It didn't happen. He was pre-med and I was a chem major, with a bent towards literature.
What I learned from that association was just how hard he worked. I worked hard but my God he was a machine. We were both in the top 3 percent of our class – I know that because of my draft board status, which was published – with him having an outstanding career in medicine and me having a similar career as an international corporate executive. Was either of us “outliers”? I don’t think so.
Years later – now retired in my mid-thirties – I decided to get a Ph.D. in organization-industrial psychology to better understand corpocracy, which gave me fits.
Without preliminary preparation, which differed with one of your contributors, I walked in and took my GRE examination at the age of 38 or sixteen years since college, and managed to score well enough to be accepted into the graduate program at a Florida state university.
Two of my professors, knowing my background, asked me where I took my prep course for the GRE. One of the professors said he had taken the exam “three times,” scoring higher each time after assiduously studying in a GRE review course. Neither of these professors believed I could make an acceptable score without such preparation, finding it incredulous that I didn’t know such courses existed. Were they “outliers”?
The comment about coaching resonates with me. When I was a sophomore in college, there was a core course, “Modern Literature, Greeks and the Bible” I was required to take. I liked to read but I wasn’t much into literature. My background was more oral history, as my family and clan was Irish American, a subculture that would have trouble putting 10,000 hours together collectively into anything. No “outliers” here.
Anyway, I had to take a make up examination of James Joyce’s biographical novel, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” My professor chose to make it an oral examination, and was asking me questions, when I stopped him. “May I tell you what the book meant to me?” He agreed.
When I finished, he said, “You understand Joyce, how do you explain that?” I answered, “I am Joyce,” as my Irish Catholic life was consistent with the authors. He asked me my major. I told him. He asked me what I was doing in science. I told him I was good at it.
After a long pause, studying me, he said he wanted to recommend me for the Honors Program, which had an international reputation. He said it was based on this oral exam, and my naïve, open but cutting essays on such writers as Dostoyevsky, whom I had never heard of before this class, but whom I loved.
I went home and told my Irish Roman Catholic railroad brakeman father what my professor recommended. “Can I ask you a question?” my da said, “you’re not a goddamn fag are you?”
On his trains, he saw guys reading books like I was reading, unkempt and disheveled hanging on each other, and assumed that was my future. I stayed in chemistry.
Years later, now in my fifties, still with the writing bug, I retired once again and wrote mainly books based on the changing nature of work, workers, the workplace and management, many times 10,000 hours, I would imagine, more as an avocation than vocation, returning pretty much to where my sophomore professor said I should be when I was twenty-years-old.
The irony is that I’ve written some cutting edge books (e.g.. Work Without Managers 1990), but cannot say I’m a successful writer. I think “success” is exaggerated, and the idea of “outliers,” although appealing, is a bit meaningless. I would imagine there are far more people that fit my description than Gladwell's typology.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
A READER'S RESPONSE
At 37 years old, I've figured that I have lived roughly 324120 hours, so 10000 hours would only be 1/30th of my life and that I've had about 32 bouts of 10000 hours. My question to myself is, how come I'm only good at whatever I do, and not great.
Perhaps the "correct type of practice" that Gladwell mentions is the key. When I played guitar in my teens I noodled a lot without really learning anything new--I probably hit close to 5000 hours, but really only 1000 were used to improve. The rest was self-indulgent repetition. I could say the same for my running career, my triathlon experiences, chess, jazz piano playing, my years as an English major, and even my career as a teacher. I notice a quick peak where I get better than 80% of my colleagues/peers, but then can never seem to get through the last 20%.
My flaw is the plateau effect that comes from slipping into complacency. As I look back at everything that I became good at, but not great at, I see a pattern of becoming tired, frustrated, and easily distracted. Or probably more importantly, I just want to move on to something else.
So at what I hope is at least the mid-point, (and hopefully less than a mid-point), in my life, the question becomes do I now take 10000 hours and learn to do something really well, or do I accept that the time to do this is now behind me.
P.S. I come from a Catholic background and Joyce came easy to me as well. I could also say the same for Mark Twain because I grew up in Missouri and New Orleans.
SUGGESTED READING
CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) has a chapter on “Selling and the Power of an Open Mind.” In that chapter is the power of the plateau, which I call the “plateau of failure” after a surfeit of success. The person feels stuck, and like the writer above, cannot get beyond the 80 percent of where they are to where they hope to be. They are on this plateau, which might also be called the “curve of playing it safe.” What they have forgotten or refuse to face is that what has gotten them to where they are is a simple formula:
PAIN + RISK = GROWTH
They have not perceived the nature of success, which is “the triangle of growth.” Everyone experiences it. We have a spurt of success, and then we reach a plateau. Most people reach this first plateau and coast the rest of their lives. If this sounds cruel, I rest it on more than fifty years of observation and experience as a salesman, educator, executive and consultant. It is easier to complain than contribute – Dilbert repeats this often. It is easier to say, “I had no good teachers” than to be the best teacher you know.
We in the West have misconstrued "failure." It is a plateau that everyone encounters. Those willing to keep growing encounter it many times. Paradoxically, it is on the "plateau of failure" where all learning takes place.
You may not like Sonia Sotomayor or Barak Obama, but I guarantee they have run into many plateaus and have endured the pain and taken the risks to continue to grow.
If you have not read "Confident Selling for the 90s," I suggest you find a copy. The pages 91 through 97 in this book could be the most important words you ever read.
Always be well,
Jim
PS "Confident Selling for the 90s" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and its message is as relevant today as it was then as it has become increasingly difficult to move off these plateaus.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 17, 2009
Reference: I posted the following note on Lou Schuler’s blog, “10,000 Hours? Really?” It was a reaction to Malcolm Gladwell’s book on the same subject. Many people have responded to my note.
DR. FISHER'S COMMENT:
I've just returned from a cruise in Alaska, and posted my observation of that cruise on my website ("Fat Nation, White Noise, Sloppy Language, and Other Observations). I referred in that piece to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, which I found intriguing, not so much for what it purports to advocate, but for the readiness with which readers are inclined to buy into his provocative premise -- 10,000 hours.
In high school I was mainly a four-sport jock, making all-state along the way, also finishing in the top ten percent of my class, but hardly a brain. The valedictorian flattered me by asking that I be his roommate in college. We took all the same college prep courses together so I agreed but had the feeling he would embarrass me to smithereens with his scholarship. It didn't happen. He was pre-med and I was a chem major, with a bent towards literature.
What I learned from that association was just how hard he worked. I worked hard but my God he was a machine. We were both in the top 3 percent of our class – I know that because of my draft board status, which was published – with him having an outstanding career in medicine and me having a similar career as an international corporate executive. Was either of us “outliers”? I don’t think so.
Years later – now retired in my mid-thirties – I decided to get a Ph.D. in organization-industrial psychology to better understand corpocracy, which gave me fits.
Without preliminary preparation, which differed with one of your contributors, I walked in and took my GRE examination at the age of 38 or sixteen years since college, and managed to score well enough to be accepted into the graduate program at a Florida state university.
Two of my professors, knowing my background, asked me where I took my prep course for the GRE. One of the professors said he had taken the exam “three times,” scoring higher each time after assiduously studying in a GRE review course. Neither of these professors believed I could make an acceptable score without such preparation, finding it incredulous that I didn’t know such courses existed. Were they “outliers”?
The comment about coaching resonates with me. When I was a sophomore in college, there was a core course, “Modern Literature, Greeks and the Bible” I was required to take. I liked to read but I wasn’t much into literature. My background was more oral history, as my family and clan was Irish American, a subculture that would have trouble putting 10,000 hours together collectively into anything. No “outliers” here.
Anyway, I had to take a make up examination of James Joyce’s biographical novel, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” My professor chose to make it an oral examination, and was asking me questions, when I stopped him. “May I tell you what the book meant to me?” He agreed.
When I finished, he said, “You understand Joyce, how do you explain that?” I answered, “I am Joyce,” as my Irish Catholic life was consistent with the authors. He asked me my major. I told him. He asked me what I was doing in science. I told him I was good at it.
After a long pause, studying me, he said he wanted to recommend me for the Honors Program, which had an international reputation. He said it was based on this oral exam, and my naïve, open but cutting essays on such writers as Dostoyevsky, whom I had never heard of before this class, but whom I loved.
I went home and told my Irish Roman Catholic railroad brakeman father what my professor recommended. “Can I ask you a question?” my da said, “you’re not a goddamn fag are you?”
On his trains, he saw guys reading books like I was reading, unkempt and disheveled hanging on each other, and assumed that was my future. I stayed in chemistry.
Years later, now in my fifties, still with the writing bug, I retired once again and wrote mainly books based on the changing nature of work, workers, the workplace and management, many times 10,000 hours, I would imagine, more as an avocation than vocation, returning pretty much to where my sophomore professor said I should be when I was twenty-years-old.
The irony is that I’ve written some cutting edge books (e.g.. Work Without Managers 1990), but cannot say I’m a successful writer. I think “success” is exaggerated, and the idea of “outliers,” although appealing, is a bit meaningless. I would imagine there are far more people that fit my description than Gladwell's typology.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
A READER'S RESPONSE
At 37 years old, I've figured that I have lived roughly 324120 hours, so 10000 hours would only be 1/30th of my life and that I've had about 32 bouts of 10000 hours. My question to myself is, how come I'm only good at whatever I do, and not great.
Perhaps the "correct type of practice" that Gladwell mentions is the key. When I played guitar in my teens I noodled a lot without really learning anything new--I probably hit close to 5000 hours, but really only 1000 were used to improve. The rest was self-indulgent repetition. I could say the same for my running career, my triathlon experiences, chess, jazz piano playing, my years as an English major, and even my career as a teacher. I notice a quick peak where I get better than 80% of my colleagues/peers, but then can never seem to get through the last 20%.
My flaw is the plateau effect that comes from slipping into complacency. As I look back at everything that I became good at, but not great at, I see a pattern of becoming tired, frustrated, and easily distracted. Or probably more importantly, I just want to move on to something else.
So at what I hope is at least the mid-point, (and hopefully less than a mid-point), in my life, the question becomes do I now take 10000 hours and learn to do something really well, or do I accept that the time to do this is now behind me.
P.S. I come from a Catholic background and Joyce came easy to me as well. I could also say the same for Mark Twain because I grew up in Missouri and New Orleans.
SUGGESTED READING
CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) has a chapter on “Selling and the Power of an Open Mind.” In that chapter is the power of the plateau, which I call the “plateau of failure” after a surfeit of success. The person feels stuck, and like the writer above, cannot get beyond the 80 percent of where they are to where they hope to be. They are on this plateau, which might also be called the “curve of playing it safe.” What they have forgotten or refuse to face is that what has gotten them to where they are is a simple formula:
PAIN + RISK = GROWTH
They have not perceived the nature of success, which is “the triangle of growth.” Everyone experiences it. We have a spurt of success, and then we reach a plateau. Most people reach this first plateau and coast the rest of their lives. If this sounds cruel, I rest it on more than fifty years of observation and experience as a salesman, educator, executive and consultant. It is easier to complain than contribute – Dilbert repeats this often. It is easier to say, “I had no good teachers” than to be the best teacher you know.
We in the West have misconstrued "failure." It is a plateau that everyone encounters. Those willing to keep growing encounter it many times. Paradoxically, it is on the "plateau of failure" where all learning takes place.
You may not like Sonia Sotomayor or Barak Obama, but I guarantee they have run into many plateaus and have endured the pain and taken the risks to continue to grow.
If you have not read "Confident Selling for the 90s," I suggest you find a copy. The pages 91 through 97 in this book could be the most important words you ever read.
Always be well,
Jim
PS "Confident Selling for the 90s" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and its message is as relevant today as it was then as it has become increasingly difficult to move off these plateaus.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
FRAGMENTS OF A PHILOSOPHY -- WRITING A NOVEL
FRAGMENTS OF A PHILOSOPHY – WRITING A NOVEL
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 14, 2009
REFERENCE: I am struggling to write a novel of my time in South Africa in the late 1960s during the time of apartheid. I wrote one novel as a memoir (In the Shadow of the Courthouse 2003) recalling life of the 1940s during WWII. To me, 1968 was a pivotal year in the story of Western man, and I was a witness to it in a dramatic way. I have attempted to tell that story over the past several years taking many false steps, getting discouraged, many times starting all over again, and now, at last, I am writing it episodically, chaotically, haphazardly and, hopefully, honestly, as my experience and imagination link together creatively. It was in that spirit that this fragment of philosophy was written.
* * *
The remarkable thing about novelists is how unremarkable many are who become quite famous for their work.
Ernest Hemingway barely got through high school but lived in the fantasy world of his summers in Michigan from his upper middle class home in Oak Park, Illinois. F. Scott Fitzgerald could never spell as well as a fourth grader, flunked out of Princeton in his freshman year, and dreamed of upper class status as the essence of being. He had experienced the precipitous decline of his family on the edge of wealth from his boyhood home in St. Paul, Minnesota. William Faulkner was physically lazy to the point of inertia, spending less than a semester at the University of Mississippi. He faked a military career during WWII by going to Canada becoming an RAF cadet for a few months. He then returned to his home in Oxford, Mississippi in an RAF lieutenant’s uniform playing out the charade of a wounded aviator and war hero to his gullible country folks. During this reincarnation, he changed his name from Falkner to Faulkner.
Novelists of such distinction are accomplished liars who live in their imagination to discover and project the unbridled truth that pervades the existence of us all. They do this by telling us stories.
Hemingway told the story of up tight men who had to display their macho superiority to women as a blind to their cowardice. Fitzgerald celebrated the empty lives of the wealthy and want-to-be’s in the flippant flapper age of the 1920s. Faulkner revealed how the no accounts of society were coming to fill the vacuum of the dying gentrified class of the south. His Yoknapatawpha saga with the rise of the Snopes signaled a dying world, not only in this tiny fictional county but also throughout Western society.
Hemingway and Faulkner connected with the world through the word. They won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Hemingway for his sparse prose and simple declarative sentences that got inside moral duplicity, and Faulkner for the body of work that touched the common soul.
It is no accident that many of America’s great novelists and poets of the twentieth century were born and reared in the Middle West. This includes Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Meredith Wilson, Sinclair Lewis and Edgar Lee Masters. They weren’t looking to Europe for legitimacy but were tumbling in the rural darkness to discover their unique identity, marveling at the common frailty of the human character and turning it into art.
They understood that everything is connected to everything else. Everything has to go somewhere. Nature knows best. We cannot change that fact. There is no free lunch. Everyone pays one way or another for the life they lead.
Since everything is interlinked, there are certain laws that apply, and certain patterns that are realized. Everyone in life is swimming around in these patterns. They move about, they think, as individual contractors irrespective of these patterns, but these writers prove this is not the case. They show through their art that we all live in accordance with these rules, manifestations of our programming.
Life boils down to subtleties, which are not easy to identify since we exist mainly on automatic pilot. Novelists look for these subtleties, listen to them, struggle with them in their own temperament, and penetrate them to reveal their ephemeral nature. To do so they have to be wide-awake and keep their eyes and ears alert to the variances between what we do and what we think we do.
Novelists are determinant, that is, in telling the story they are always fixed on the outcome. They see what it all means because they are not lost in the details. They see ahead because they don’t have the luxury of being lost in the moment. They see the path we follow, what we do next, and the turns we take. It is the plot of the novel but not a simple chronology. It has starts and stops, regressions and progressions, and like a life, is unfinished in the end, but with holistic meaning.
Time is an invention of man and not of Nature, and therefore is misleading, misdirecting, and often misinterpreted.
That said there is a connecting thread through the story which links all the episodes together in what is considered the stuff of life. The life that has been captured is not real but taken out of the writer’s experience and imagination and stuffed into a fabrication that purports to be real. In so doing it connects the reader to those dimensions in the reader’s life and imagination. It is entertainment, not edification, as Somerset Maugham has put it. Ironically, it could be argued there are more meaningful psychology and sociology in a good novel than any textbook on the subject.
Novels are created to bring the story to life by making character, personality and conflict more reasonably and easily examined in the context of the story. The novelist rises above the clamber of the current reality of his story by looking at it from a distance.
The challenge is to have a plot and connecting threads that are the stuff of life and hang together not artificially but as they hang together in the chaos of life. That’s the point. Since we are all connected, we can live a pointless life if we choose to like holding a book upside down and attempting to read it. If we do, the novelist shows life is a tragic comedy in which existence triumphs over living.
The novel is moving into new territory. Life has become complex and so has our programming. Consequently, there is not just one point but a thousand points, a whole series of points, patterns, rules and determinants.
The story can be told backwards or forward, episodically or haphazardly to create a climate of tension with the determinant revealed before the story is told, and then told in a nonlinear fashion as life, itself, unfolds. It would be heresy for a mystery novel to remove its cliffhanger aspect, but something like the perspective of God when the end is known before the story being told unravels. It is the end of history.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 14, 2009
REFERENCE: I am struggling to write a novel of my time in South Africa in the late 1960s during the time of apartheid. I wrote one novel as a memoir (In the Shadow of the Courthouse 2003) recalling life of the 1940s during WWII. To me, 1968 was a pivotal year in the story of Western man, and I was a witness to it in a dramatic way. I have attempted to tell that story over the past several years taking many false steps, getting discouraged, many times starting all over again, and now, at last, I am writing it episodically, chaotically, haphazardly and, hopefully, honestly, as my experience and imagination link together creatively. It was in that spirit that this fragment of philosophy was written.
* * *
The remarkable thing about novelists is how unremarkable many are who become quite famous for their work.
Ernest Hemingway barely got through high school but lived in the fantasy world of his summers in Michigan from his upper middle class home in Oak Park, Illinois. F. Scott Fitzgerald could never spell as well as a fourth grader, flunked out of Princeton in his freshman year, and dreamed of upper class status as the essence of being. He had experienced the precipitous decline of his family on the edge of wealth from his boyhood home in St. Paul, Minnesota. William Faulkner was physically lazy to the point of inertia, spending less than a semester at the University of Mississippi. He faked a military career during WWII by going to Canada becoming an RAF cadet for a few months. He then returned to his home in Oxford, Mississippi in an RAF lieutenant’s uniform playing out the charade of a wounded aviator and war hero to his gullible country folks. During this reincarnation, he changed his name from Falkner to Faulkner.
Novelists of such distinction are accomplished liars who live in their imagination to discover and project the unbridled truth that pervades the existence of us all. They do this by telling us stories.
Hemingway told the story of up tight men who had to display their macho superiority to women as a blind to their cowardice. Fitzgerald celebrated the empty lives of the wealthy and want-to-be’s in the flippant flapper age of the 1920s. Faulkner revealed how the no accounts of society were coming to fill the vacuum of the dying gentrified class of the south. His Yoknapatawpha saga with the rise of the Snopes signaled a dying world, not only in this tiny fictional county but also throughout Western society.
Hemingway and Faulkner connected with the world through the word. They won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Hemingway for his sparse prose and simple declarative sentences that got inside moral duplicity, and Faulkner for the body of work that touched the common soul.
It is no accident that many of America’s great novelists and poets of the twentieth century were born and reared in the Middle West. This includes Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Meredith Wilson, Sinclair Lewis and Edgar Lee Masters. They weren’t looking to Europe for legitimacy but were tumbling in the rural darkness to discover their unique identity, marveling at the common frailty of the human character and turning it into art.
They understood that everything is connected to everything else. Everything has to go somewhere. Nature knows best. We cannot change that fact. There is no free lunch. Everyone pays one way or another for the life they lead.
Since everything is interlinked, there are certain laws that apply, and certain patterns that are realized. Everyone in life is swimming around in these patterns. They move about, they think, as individual contractors irrespective of these patterns, but these writers prove this is not the case. They show through their art that we all live in accordance with these rules, manifestations of our programming.
Life boils down to subtleties, which are not easy to identify since we exist mainly on automatic pilot. Novelists look for these subtleties, listen to them, struggle with them in their own temperament, and penetrate them to reveal their ephemeral nature. To do so they have to be wide-awake and keep their eyes and ears alert to the variances between what we do and what we think we do.
Novelists are determinant, that is, in telling the story they are always fixed on the outcome. They see what it all means because they are not lost in the details. They see ahead because they don’t have the luxury of being lost in the moment. They see the path we follow, what we do next, and the turns we take. It is the plot of the novel but not a simple chronology. It has starts and stops, regressions and progressions, and like a life, is unfinished in the end, but with holistic meaning.
Time is an invention of man and not of Nature, and therefore is misleading, misdirecting, and often misinterpreted.
That said there is a connecting thread through the story which links all the episodes together in what is considered the stuff of life. The life that has been captured is not real but taken out of the writer’s experience and imagination and stuffed into a fabrication that purports to be real. In so doing it connects the reader to those dimensions in the reader’s life and imagination. It is entertainment, not edification, as Somerset Maugham has put it. Ironically, it could be argued there are more meaningful psychology and sociology in a good novel than any textbook on the subject.
Novels are created to bring the story to life by making character, personality and conflict more reasonably and easily examined in the context of the story. The novelist rises above the clamber of the current reality of his story by looking at it from a distance.
The challenge is to have a plot and connecting threads that are the stuff of life and hang together not artificially but as they hang together in the chaos of life. That’s the point. Since we are all connected, we can live a pointless life if we choose to like holding a book upside down and attempting to read it. If we do, the novelist shows life is a tragic comedy in which existence triumphs over living.
The novel is moving into new territory. Life has become complex and so has our programming. Consequently, there is not just one point but a thousand points, a whole series of points, patterns, rules and determinants.
The story can be told backwards or forward, episodically or haphazardly to create a climate of tension with the determinant revealed before the story is told, and then told in a nonlinear fashion as life, itself, unfolds. It would be heresy for a mystery novel to remove its cliffhanger aspect, but something like the perspective of God when the end is known before the story being told unravels. It is the end of history.
* * *
Monday, July 13, 2009
FRAGMENTS OF A PHILOSOPHY -- HOLLOW MEN LEADERSHIP IN A CELEBRITY CULTURE
FRAGMENTS OF A PHILOSOPHY – HOLLOW MEN LEADERSHIP IN A CELEBRITY CULTURE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 13, 2009
It was probably when I was not yet nine that I noticed something was wrong. World War Two was just underway and the quiet of the globe was starting to experience a nervous rumble underfoot sending shockwaves up the spine.
I didn’t understand this but noticed it in my da who smoked continuously with my mother in Iowa City awaiting the birth of my little sister, making us four siblings, two girls and two boys. We were poor. He worked on the WPA with a seven-grade education and yet he was in every sense my leader and the personification of my security.
In the scheme of things, I suppose, he was a forgotten man, one of the dregs of society limping out of the Great Depression, but in another sense he was his own man, as the celebrity culture that would come to dominate society for the next sixty-five years was just being born.
My parents felt a kinship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a father figure someone “out there” that was watching over them but not in any intrusive sense, someone whose word was his bond, which in a way reaffirmed their bond to themselves. He was the President of the United States and was viewed almost in the same sense as our first president, George Washington, something of a mythic figure, but one that conducted “fireside chats” on the radio, which bonded them to him and to themselves.
It was this connection that remained throughout the Great War, and that died on April 12, 1945, when FDR died at the age of sixty-one. Harry S. Truman, a poorly educated man like my da, a feisty man like him, took office only three months into FDR’s fourth term. Truman became a presence, dropping the atomic bomb, having spats with the press over his daughter’s talent, and then bringing leadership down to the level of a scrum by ceremoniously removing General Douglas MacArthur from Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Korean War. The irony here is by removing the celebrity general Truman unwittingly elevated celebrity to the leadership sport of the future.
Thereafter, we have elected personalities not leaders, posers not doers, tacticians not strategist, celebrities not men of conscience. Time magazine in its July 20 (2009) issue deals with leadership superfluously, a magazine once that stood on the top of the pyramid in its industry like General Motors on its, with it and GM now a shadow of themselves.
It is ironic that the Time article quotes the German sociologists Max Weber who once wrote on authority in terms of doers, whereas the article is a profile of current personalities as leaders. The article ends by quoting Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in WWII, General Dwight David Eisenhower, who wrote an apology brief (never published) if the D-Day Invasion on June 6, 1944 had failed.
Time called the unpublished brief an example of leadership. The great WWII journalist, Ernie Pyle, got it right. General Eisenhower from the beginning was a political general, and the brief was a political failsafe exercise.
It was a “my fault” brief in the character of MacArthur’s assertion, “I shall return” (to the Philippines) when the Japanese took over the islands early in WWII. Celebrity is all about “me,” never all about “us.”
That said much of what Time says in the article I have written in the past on leadership, especially the empty suit that charismatic leadership is, yet I have a confession to make. I write in anger, and I would imagine that cuts me off from an audience. Time writes to romance its dwindling audience now essentially replaced by bloggers and the Internet.
My concern is not this evolutionary change from traditional sources of communication to a more amateur indiscriminate media. Indeed, I am an example of it. No, my concern is that of the celebrity culture that is endemic to us all, a culture in which the focus is on finding an audience not finding the measure of one’s own soul, or being acclaimed, celebrated, recognized, and, yes, rewarded when none of this has sustaining significance when it comes from the outside.
If an individual fails to develop a moral center, a moral compass, he has no guidance system. He is forever lost and cannot find his way to where he expects to go for he has no idea where he is.
It is no accident T. S. Eliot wrote of “hollow men.” He could see a celebrity culture was moving in the direction of a “hollow society” run by charismatic personalities, who look good, speak well, have the right credentials, marry well, and project the right tinsel image once limited to Hollywood.
T. S. Eliot:
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together,
“Between the idea,
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow,
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
When a society looks to CNN for its news, when leaders look to polls to see how they are doing, when those who lead become method actors coached by gurus on how to present themselves, when leadership becomes a game and not a gamble, when children are not allowed to be children and programmed into precocious celebrities, all direction comes from outside as there is no inside to contemplate. When we worry more about what others think about us and less about what we think of ourselves, we are not in charge, we are hollow men, and what we construe as leadership is another form of enslavement.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 13, 2009
It was probably when I was not yet nine that I noticed something was wrong. World War Two was just underway and the quiet of the globe was starting to experience a nervous rumble underfoot sending shockwaves up the spine.
I didn’t understand this but noticed it in my da who smoked continuously with my mother in Iowa City awaiting the birth of my little sister, making us four siblings, two girls and two boys. We were poor. He worked on the WPA with a seven-grade education and yet he was in every sense my leader and the personification of my security.
In the scheme of things, I suppose, he was a forgotten man, one of the dregs of society limping out of the Great Depression, but in another sense he was his own man, as the celebrity culture that would come to dominate society for the next sixty-five years was just being born.
My parents felt a kinship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a father figure someone “out there” that was watching over them but not in any intrusive sense, someone whose word was his bond, which in a way reaffirmed their bond to themselves. He was the President of the United States and was viewed almost in the same sense as our first president, George Washington, something of a mythic figure, but one that conducted “fireside chats” on the radio, which bonded them to him and to themselves.
It was this connection that remained throughout the Great War, and that died on April 12, 1945, when FDR died at the age of sixty-one. Harry S. Truman, a poorly educated man like my da, a feisty man like him, took office only three months into FDR’s fourth term. Truman became a presence, dropping the atomic bomb, having spats with the press over his daughter’s talent, and then bringing leadership down to the level of a scrum by ceremoniously removing General Douglas MacArthur from Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Korean War. The irony here is by removing the celebrity general Truman unwittingly elevated celebrity to the leadership sport of the future.
Thereafter, we have elected personalities not leaders, posers not doers, tacticians not strategist, celebrities not men of conscience. Time magazine in its July 20 (2009) issue deals with leadership superfluously, a magazine once that stood on the top of the pyramid in its industry like General Motors on its, with it and GM now a shadow of themselves.
It is ironic that the Time article quotes the German sociologists Max Weber who once wrote on authority in terms of doers, whereas the article is a profile of current personalities as leaders. The article ends by quoting Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in WWII, General Dwight David Eisenhower, who wrote an apology brief (never published) if the D-Day Invasion on June 6, 1944 had failed.
Time called the unpublished brief an example of leadership. The great WWII journalist, Ernie Pyle, got it right. General Eisenhower from the beginning was a political general, and the brief was a political failsafe exercise.
It was a “my fault” brief in the character of MacArthur’s assertion, “I shall return” (to the Philippines) when the Japanese took over the islands early in WWII. Celebrity is all about “me,” never all about “us.”
That said much of what Time says in the article I have written in the past on leadership, especially the empty suit that charismatic leadership is, yet I have a confession to make. I write in anger, and I would imagine that cuts me off from an audience. Time writes to romance its dwindling audience now essentially replaced by bloggers and the Internet.
My concern is not this evolutionary change from traditional sources of communication to a more amateur indiscriminate media. Indeed, I am an example of it. No, my concern is that of the celebrity culture that is endemic to us all, a culture in which the focus is on finding an audience not finding the measure of one’s own soul, or being acclaimed, celebrated, recognized, and, yes, rewarded when none of this has sustaining significance when it comes from the outside.
If an individual fails to develop a moral center, a moral compass, he has no guidance system. He is forever lost and cannot find his way to where he expects to go for he has no idea where he is.
It is no accident T. S. Eliot wrote of “hollow men.” He could see a celebrity culture was moving in the direction of a “hollow society” run by charismatic personalities, who look good, speak well, have the right credentials, marry well, and project the right tinsel image once limited to Hollywood.
T. S. Eliot:
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together,
“Between the idea,
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow,
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
When a society looks to CNN for its news, when leaders look to polls to see how they are doing, when those who lead become method actors coached by gurus on how to present themselves, when leadership becomes a game and not a gamble, when children are not allowed to be children and programmed into precocious celebrities, all direction comes from outside as there is no inside to contemplate. When we worry more about what others think about us and less about what we think of ourselves, we are not in charge, we are hollow men, and what we construe as leadership is another form of enslavement.
* * *
Saturday, July 04, 2009
LAGGING INDICATORS IN A CELEBRITY MELTDOWN!
LAGGING INDICATORS IN A CELEBRITY MELTDOWN!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 4, 2009
* * *
“Have you ever noticed lagging indicators control our lives? We are told unemployment is a lagging indicator, that it persists as we are in economic recovery. You don’t have a job and can’t pay your bills, but the government says ‘not to worry, the recession will soon be over, that good days are ahead!’
“Lagging indicators are not confined to economics. They relate to everything. You can’t breathe for the pollution but the Environmental Protection Agency publishes new standards on carbon dioxide emissions to ensure improved air quality, but you still drive your big car or truck, dispose of your wastes haphazardly, and fail to see yourself as a contributor to the problem.
“Lagging indicators common to a large segment of the population are emphysema and diabetes, which are primarily life style excesses, but do people change their behavior?
“Joblessness is a lagging indicator of insufficient and inappropriate education yet nearly half the ethnic population of the country represents the most egregious case of primary and secondary school dropouts.
“Lagging indicators explain the unexplainable. So, I ask myself as a writer why is this so? Is it because people worry more about how they are perceived than how they perceive themselves? Do they lack authentic identity? Do they expect someone else to pick them up and make them useful? Do they think they are owed a living? To me, WILL is the lagging indicator of a Republic on the brink of losing the idea of freedom and therefore its collective identity.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., “Fragments of a Philosophy.”
* * *
REFERENCE:
I shared my publishing woes with my readers, and they have responded. This is not surprising. Many are authors in their own right. They have encountered the barriers alluded to in that piece.
Some of these readers are academics and educators in such fields as sociology, psychology, management, languages, and the hard sciences, while others are writers as philosophers, novelists, journalists and entrepreneurs.
Optimists almost to a fault, they don’t see the lagging indicators driving them, and us, to extinction but rather see them as part of the ritualistic lexicon of our bureaucratic corpocracy. To my mind, these brave souls who write are uncelebrated, yet the last bastion of our survival. I hope for all our sakes that they are right in their optimism.
A READER WRITES:
Jim,
Sorry about the rejection of your most recent works. We both know that is the nature of the business. Critical reviews are meant to be critical and everyone has a perspective, it is not an objective world. Thank god.
About BK (Barrett-Kohler), there is no publisher I hold in higher esteem. I greatly admired Steve Piersanti and his team that makes the firm the best in my experience. I have also known Peter Block back to the time when we hired him at Searle in the 70's. I do believe he has one very good book in stewardship. Another B-K writer, Peter Koestembaum, is a wonderful man who like you makes his own road but lets his great mind lead him.
A BK book I strongly encourage you to read is one on our economic systemic debacle, David Korten's "Agenda for a New Economy.” It proposes how to FIX our mess not just complain about it. Though my retirement nest egg has shrunk, I understand why we seek to vilify the financial geniuses that created such a disaster for us.
We need to examine a political philosophy mouthed so effectively by a grade “b” actor, who a few decades ago seemed determined to lead us into destroying any government that might ask something more of us than our blood on a battlefield. Blood that I donated willingly but his recent follower into the White House never did.
Personally, I know my financial situation would be much better if my taxes had been raised enough to have a government that would watch over our super bright economic advisors that seemed to work the same miracle that Madoff promised.
Nothing is simple but clearly no one was looking out for the American public and yes any idiot must now recognize that an unconstrained economic machine only pays off for those who design and manage it.
Next time I do hope we have someone elected or appointed who cares about our economy and not self-interest being the route of all returns. Now if I tried to expand this I might have to write nearly as much as the fantasy writer Ayn Rand. At a younger age, I too nearly worshiped her. I read her words so many years ago and they spoke to my adolescent male ego, and then I grew up.
Maybe our country may also move towards maturity. With all you write, and perhaps particularly with what I sometimes don't agree with, you are helping us to grow up as a nation. I am optimistic but as I said in one of my last published articles I look to 2050 as the point in which I believe many of us will agree we are maturing as a people.
* * *
A READER RESPONDS TO THIS WRITER’S COMMENTS:
It's interesting the perspective people get. Your friend did not say if hiring Peter Block in the 1970's did his company any good. Peter Koestembaum is a friend of Peter Block's but in no way his mentor. He is a philosophy professor that sounds good and has a way with empathy phrases - like Peter Block.
Steve Piersanti of BK is a smart cookie but it seems now that he is too attached to what made him successful in the 1990s and cannot get with the 2010s fast coming up.
So we move on and learn again that each person sees the world, as they want it to be rather than what it is or might be in other people's eyes.
Keep trucking.
* * *
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
These two responders are accomplished writers who stay the course as their lights direct them. I salute them and all who develop the domain of their own personal opinions. Too often what we think, believe, value and cherish are second or third hand opinions of commentators who bombard our senses on radio, television and the Internet, and to a lesser degree, in newspapers, magazines and books. I am not looking for confirmation. I am looking for open minds.
One writer, responding to my publishing woes, after my being rejected by Barrett-Kohler, sings the praises of this publisher, as well as a couple of authors in B-K’s camp. It is based on his experience and is privileged, and is taken in that sense. I am a person who is disinclined to look up to others or to send hosannas their way as I am more inclined to be suspect of their motivation, especially if they suggest how I think and feel, or should.
The other writer, reading these comments, took exception to the claims of the first writer, again, on the basis of his privileged information. He happens to be intimately aware of my published, and unpublished writings. Both have read me for years.
No surprise, the three of us are or have been academics with differing perspectives on that experience. One of the tenets of my faith is that if you cannot write well you are not likely to think well. I have found most academics do not write well. Instead, they climb into their esoteric stratosphere of academia above the common plain where most of us live and hope, and write to each other in isolation. It was their books that I had to read in my advanced education. Now, I stay clear of them at all cost.
Paradoxically, when most academics come off that esoteric plane, and attempt to connect with us, they invariably write down to us as if they know us, can smell our sweat from fear and work, and can walk in our shoes while never having visited our world except in algorithms. They have never been exposed to the terrors of the workplace where the draconian certitude of bosses rule. Bosses keep us in line by the power of the paycheck and the ability to demote or fire us.
HYPE (Harvard, Yale, Princeton Elites), who do their case studies in empathetic understanding of CEOs and managers on the rise, have few clues as to the nature of our world. This has led them to leaderless leadership.
* * *
My writing is to people who have risen out of that stench, or are having difficulty climbing out of it now. I find myself alone, growing old, no longer a pretty boy, and seeing the Grim Reaper just ahead. I write out of a life that is running out of innings.
I have worked in the dirtiest most toxic places as an industrial day laborer in a factory as a boy. That boy rose from a working class family in a factory community to virtually every level of organization and he uses that as his template.
God gave him brains, good looks, height and good health. He was blessed with the accident of being born in the United States of America, where circumstances spelled “opportunity.”
He was also born at a time when the nation was in the Great Depression, which meant when he came of age, there weren’t many like him, making for little competition. It didn’t hurt that WWII had been successfully concluded and the world wanted to “buy American.”
He had the good sense to know he couldn’t take his brains for granted, couldn’t depend on handouts to break his fall, couldn’t look to others to cut a path for him to follow. He was on his own, and had the lights to know it, to use it, and to not look back.
He was also privileged to have lived in a country in which the war never touched the continental United States.
He saw it an advantage not having an economic cushion to break his fall should he fail, no one to provide him with money he did not earn. With the aid of academic college scholarships (declining athletic scholarships), and lucky to live in a community in which industries hired college students in the summer, living at home and saving every penny he earned, he received a college education without any college loans.
To this day he thanks God for being born in a time of compulsory military service. This found him in US Navy, where as an enlisted man he was introduced to members of society more underprivileged than he had ever been. He loved the navy, loved the discipline, loved its sophistication in training, and would come to wonder why society lagged behind such sophistication. It was military service that earned him the privilege to use the G.I. Bill to continue his education to a Ph.D.
* * *
All his publications come out of this acculturation. He doesn’t write someone else’s preamble but his own. It provided him with the perspective to publish most recently A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007), which in a prophetic sense identifies why we are stuck and continue to be stuck, and shows that there is no indication of our finding our way out of this dilemma.
* * *
Long ago, way back in the days when I worked for Nalco Chemical Company, one of my colleagues said that I was prescient, that I could read the future with uncanny skill as it related to Nalco. Truth be told I wasn't prescient at all but had the faculty of taking disparate pieces of information and weaving them into a conceptual grid, which I am still doing, but without too many in the power grid paying me much mind.
The fact that I persist is not that I am particularly patient or especially masochistic. It is simply a lagging indicator of “what is” versus “what is presumed to be.” People in the trenches, where I live, understand what I am talking about, but unfortunately, most people running the show do not.
We people in the trenches are told these high rollers are villains. They are not. They have abandoned their individual centers and gotten caught up in the fiction of “doing well.” They are lost in that fiction, and have come to believe they are brilliant as well as deranged when they are neither. They are simply lost.
To make my point, all these complicated derivatives on Wall Street, and these complex statistical instruments painfully being deciphered by the government are ARITHMETIC.
The business of business is adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. But in a skin-deep culture, which is other-directed not self-directed, you can fog these numbers up to resemble Einstein’s world until they collapse around you in shame, as they have for Bernard Madoff.
I think God has a good laugh at our expense. After all, computers are based on two numbers, 0 and 1, and you can't get much more basic than that. But I drift.
When I wrote WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990), there was one writer, Dr. Thomas Brown, who could see, flawed as the effort was, that I was on to something. Virtually everything in that book written nearly twenty years ago has come to pass. That includes the demise of General Motors. Dr. Brown was then editor of Industry Week, contributor to PBS "All Things Considered," and co-founder of PBS "Market Place."
He authored a series of "lessons learned" in pamphlet form for Barrett-Kohler, which I thought were outstanding. BK didn't find an audience. Dr. Brown went against the grain but empathetically not polemically, as I am inclined to do, and he, too, failed. I rest my case with B-K there.
* * *
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate, is fond of referring to people in government and on Wall Street as being "smart," as if that has any meaning. We are told President Obama is “smart,” something FDR was not told. FDR was said to have had a first rate personality and a second rate mind. That said he led us out of the Great Depression and to victory in World War Two. Maybe we need more dumb people who do brilliant things and less brilliant people who do dumb things.
* * *
Nothing that has happened, is happening and will happen surprises me. We live in an age of celebrity. The audience gives celebrities their identity. It is Faust for real. Celebrities are in the pleasing business, or externally directed rather than internally controlled and self-directed. What is construed, as self-interest with scores of flatterers and idolaters satisfying the celebrity’s every wish, is actually self-deception bordering on self-annihilation. Celebrity behavior more resembles that of the spoiled child than the mature adult.
To sustain their celebrity, to keep their audience coming back for more, it becomes a grueling contest of will to fill that need at the depletion of their own center.
Since the need of the audience is insatiable, and since their total orientation is to please others at the expense of pleasing themselves, celebrities eventually become a figment of their own imagination, an icon, a legend, and no longer a person. Small wonder that Elvis Presley and now Michael Jackson have fallen on their medications trying to be what their audience defined them to be, and then resolutely attempting to meet those impossible demands. What does it mean to make millions or billions and never having had a life?
When what you think, believe, value and cherish comes from the outside, it means your identity is created by others and belongs to them, and that you are but an instrument of their will in its fulfillment.
This programmed identity comes in the form of compliments, honors, promotions, success, and fortune. None of it has real meaning if it depletes you as an individual and makes you a stranger to yourself.
It is why when someone tells me "how smart someone is" it sends up a red flag. The smartest kid I ever knew flunked out of college. Smart people are failing because they are trying to be smart rather than act effectively. They allow others to define them and then accept that identity as theirs, when it is at the sacrifice of their identity and often their rare talent. One of the most toxic illustrations of our collective societal insanity is “American Idol.” The fact that it is the most popular program on television is a lagging indicator of the state of our collective mental health.
Novelist Elmore Leonard says, "When you read something, and you say, 'that is really good writing,' the author is getting in the way of his story." President Barak Obama is getting in the way of his story as he feeds on the dribble from television commentators and Internet bloggers, which I understand he reads religiously. God help us if he becomes a celebrity president like JFK, and starts to believe his own celebrity defines him.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 4, 2009
* * *
“Have you ever noticed lagging indicators control our lives? We are told unemployment is a lagging indicator, that it persists as we are in economic recovery. You don’t have a job and can’t pay your bills, but the government says ‘not to worry, the recession will soon be over, that good days are ahead!’
“Lagging indicators are not confined to economics. They relate to everything. You can’t breathe for the pollution but the Environmental Protection Agency publishes new standards on carbon dioxide emissions to ensure improved air quality, but you still drive your big car or truck, dispose of your wastes haphazardly, and fail to see yourself as a contributor to the problem.
“Lagging indicators common to a large segment of the population are emphysema and diabetes, which are primarily life style excesses, but do people change their behavior?
“Joblessness is a lagging indicator of insufficient and inappropriate education yet nearly half the ethnic population of the country represents the most egregious case of primary and secondary school dropouts.
“Lagging indicators explain the unexplainable. So, I ask myself as a writer why is this so? Is it because people worry more about how they are perceived than how they perceive themselves? Do they lack authentic identity? Do they expect someone else to pick them up and make them useful? Do they think they are owed a living? To me, WILL is the lagging indicator of a Republic on the brink of losing the idea of freedom and therefore its collective identity.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., “Fragments of a Philosophy.”
* * *
REFERENCE:
I shared my publishing woes with my readers, and they have responded. This is not surprising. Many are authors in their own right. They have encountered the barriers alluded to in that piece.
Some of these readers are academics and educators in such fields as sociology, psychology, management, languages, and the hard sciences, while others are writers as philosophers, novelists, journalists and entrepreneurs.
Optimists almost to a fault, they don’t see the lagging indicators driving them, and us, to extinction but rather see them as part of the ritualistic lexicon of our bureaucratic corpocracy. To my mind, these brave souls who write are uncelebrated, yet the last bastion of our survival. I hope for all our sakes that they are right in their optimism.
A READER WRITES:
Jim,
Sorry about the rejection of your most recent works. We both know that is the nature of the business. Critical reviews are meant to be critical and everyone has a perspective, it is not an objective world. Thank god.
About BK (Barrett-Kohler), there is no publisher I hold in higher esteem. I greatly admired Steve Piersanti and his team that makes the firm the best in my experience. I have also known Peter Block back to the time when we hired him at Searle in the 70's. I do believe he has one very good book in stewardship. Another B-K writer, Peter Koestembaum, is a wonderful man who like you makes his own road but lets his great mind lead him.
A BK book I strongly encourage you to read is one on our economic systemic debacle, David Korten's "Agenda for a New Economy.” It proposes how to FIX our mess not just complain about it. Though my retirement nest egg has shrunk, I understand why we seek to vilify the financial geniuses that created such a disaster for us.
We need to examine a political philosophy mouthed so effectively by a grade “b” actor, who a few decades ago seemed determined to lead us into destroying any government that might ask something more of us than our blood on a battlefield. Blood that I donated willingly but his recent follower into the White House never did.
Personally, I know my financial situation would be much better if my taxes had been raised enough to have a government that would watch over our super bright economic advisors that seemed to work the same miracle that Madoff promised.
Nothing is simple but clearly no one was looking out for the American public and yes any idiot must now recognize that an unconstrained economic machine only pays off for those who design and manage it.
Next time I do hope we have someone elected or appointed who cares about our economy and not self-interest being the route of all returns. Now if I tried to expand this I might have to write nearly as much as the fantasy writer Ayn Rand. At a younger age, I too nearly worshiped her. I read her words so many years ago and they spoke to my adolescent male ego, and then I grew up.
Maybe our country may also move towards maturity. With all you write, and perhaps particularly with what I sometimes don't agree with, you are helping us to grow up as a nation. I am optimistic but as I said in one of my last published articles I look to 2050 as the point in which I believe many of us will agree we are maturing as a people.
* * *
A READER RESPONDS TO THIS WRITER’S COMMENTS:
It's interesting the perspective people get. Your friend did not say if hiring Peter Block in the 1970's did his company any good. Peter Koestembaum is a friend of Peter Block's but in no way his mentor. He is a philosophy professor that sounds good and has a way with empathy phrases - like Peter Block.
Steve Piersanti of BK is a smart cookie but it seems now that he is too attached to what made him successful in the 1990s and cannot get with the 2010s fast coming up.
So we move on and learn again that each person sees the world, as they want it to be rather than what it is or might be in other people's eyes.
Keep trucking.
* * *
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
These two responders are accomplished writers who stay the course as their lights direct them. I salute them and all who develop the domain of their own personal opinions. Too often what we think, believe, value and cherish are second or third hand opinions of commentators who bombard our senses on radio, television and the Internet, and to a lesser degree, in newspapers, magazines and books. I am not looking for confirmation. I am looking for open minds.
One writer, responding to my publishing woes, after my being rejected by Barrett-Kohler, sings the praises of this publisher, as well as a couple of authors in B-K’s camp. It is based on his experience and is privileged, and is taken in that sense. I am a person who is disinclined to look up to others or to send hosannas their way as I am more inclined to be suspect of their motivation, especially if they suggest how I think and feel, or should.
The other writer, reading these comments, took exception to the claims of the first writer, again, on the basis of his privileged information. He happens to be intimately aware of my published, and unpublished writings. Both have read me for years.
No surprise, the three of us are or have been academics with differing perspectives on that experience. One of the tenets of my faith is that if you cannot write well you are not likely to think well. I have found most academics do not write well. Instead, they climb into their esoteric stratosphere of academia above the common plain where most of us live and hope, and write to each other in isolation. It was their books that I had to read in my advanced education. Now, I stay clear of them at all cost.
Paradoxically, when most academics come off that esoteric plane, and attempt to connect with us, they invariably write down to us as if they know us, can smell our sweat from fear and work, and can walk in our shoes while never having visited our world except in algorithms. They have never been exposed to the terrors of the workplace where the draconian certitude of bosses rule. Bosses keep us in line by the power of the paycheck and the ability to demote or fire us.
HYPE (Harvard, Yale, Princeton Elites), who do their case studies in empathetic understanding of CEOs and managers on the rise, have few clues as to the nature of our world. This has led them to leaderless leadership.
* * *
My writing is to people who have risen out of that stench, or are having difficulty climbing out of it now. I find myself alone, growing old, no longer a pretty boy, and seeing the Grim Reaper just ahead. I write out of a life that is running out of innings.
I have worked in the dirtiest most toxic places as an industrial day laborer in a factory as a boy. That boy rose from a working class family in a factory community to virtually every level of organization and he uses that as his template.
God gave him brains, good looks, height and good health. He was blessed with the accident of being born in the United States of America, where circumstances spelled “opportunity.”
He was also born at a time when the nation was in the Great Depression, which meant when he came of age, there weren’t many like him, making for little competition. It didn’t hurt that WWII had been successfully concluded and the world wanted to “buy American.”
He had the good sense to know he couldn’t take his brains for granted, couldn’t depend on handouts to break his fall, couldn’t look to others to cut a path for him to follow. He was on his own, and had the lights to know it, to use it, and to not look back.
He was also privileged to have lived in a country in which the war never touched the continental United States.
He saw it an advantage not having an economic cushion to break his fall should he fail, no one to provide him with money he did not earn. With the aid of academic college scholarships (declining athletic scholarships), and lucky to live in a community in which industries hired college students in the summer, living at home and saving every penny he earned, he received a college education without any college loans.
To this day he thanks God for being born in a time of compulsory military service. This found him in US Navy, where as an enlisted man he was introduced to members of society more underprivileged than he had ever been. He loved the navy, loved the discipline, loved its sophistication in training, and would come to wonder why society lagged behind such sophistication. It was military service that earned him the privilege to use the G.I. Bill to continue his education to a Ph.D.
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All his publications come out of this acculturation. He doesn’t write someone else’s preamble but his own. It provided him with the perspective to publish most recently A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007), which in a prophetic sense identifies why we are stuck and continue to be stuck, and shows that there is no indication of our finding our way out of this dilemma.
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Long ago, way back in the days when I worked for Nalco Chemical Company, one of my colleagues said that I was prescient, that I could read the future with uncanny skill as it related to Nalco. Truth be told I wasn't prescient at all but had the faculty of taking disparate pieces of information and weaving them into a conceptual grid, which I am still doing, but without too many in the power grid paying me much mind.
The fact that I persist is not that I am particularly patient or especially masochistic. It is simply a lagging indicator of “what is” versus “what is presumed to be.” People in the trenches, where I live, understand what I am talking about, but unfortunately, most people running the show do not.
We people in the trenches are told these high rollers are villains. They are not. They have abandoned their individual centers and gotten caught up in the fiction of “doing well.” They are lost in that fiction, and have come to believe they are brilliant as well as deranged when they are neither. They are simply lost.
To make my point, all these complicated derivatives on Wall Street, and these complex statistical instruments painfully being deciphered by the government are ARITHMETIC.
The business of business is adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. But in a skin-deep culture, which is other-directed not self-directed, you can fog these numbers up to resemble Einstein’s world until they collapse around you in shame, as they have for Bernard Madoff.
I think God has a good laugh at our expense. After all, computers are based on two numbers, 0 and 1, and you can't get much more basic than that. But I drift.
When I wrote WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990), there was one writer, Dr. Thomas Brown, who could see, flawed as the effort was, that I was on to something. Virtually everything in that book written nearly twenty years ago has come to pass. That includes the demise of General Motors. Dr. Brown was then editor of Industry Week, contributor to PBS "All Things Considered," and co-founder of PBS "Market Place."
He authored a series of "lessons learned" in pamphlet form for Barrett-Kohler, which I thought were outstanding. BK didn't find an audience. Dr. Brown went against the grain but empathetically not polemically, as I am inclined to do, and he, too, failed. I rest my case with B-K there.
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Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate, is fond of referring to people in government and on Wall Street as being "smart," as if that has any meaning. We are told President Obama is “smart,” something FDR was not told. FDR was said to have had a first rate personality and a second rate mind. That said he led us out of the Great Depression and to victory in World War Two. Maybe we need more dumb people who do brilliant things and less brilliant people who do dumb things.
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Nothing that has happened, is happening and will happen surprises me. We live in an age of celebrity. The audience gives celebrities their identity. It is Faust for real. Celebrities are in the pleasing business, or externally directed rather than internally controlled and self-directed. What is construed, as self-interest with scores of flatterers and idolaters satisfying the celebrity’s every wish, is actually self-deception bordering on self-annihilation. Celebrity behavior more resembles that of the spoiled child than the mature adult.
To sustain their celebrity, to keep their audience coming back for more, it becomes a grueling contest of will to fill that need at the depletion of their own center.
Since the need of the audience is insatiable, and since their total orientation is to please others at the expense of pleasing themselves, celebrities eventually become a figment of their own imagination, an icon, a legend, and no longer a person. Small wonder that Elvis Presley and now Michael Jackson have fallen on their medications trying to be what their audience defined them to be, and then resolutely attempting to meet those impossible demands. What does it mean to make millions or billions and never having had a life?
When what you think, believe, value and cherish comes from the outside, it means your identity is created by others and belongs to them, and that you are but an instrument of their will in its fulfillment.
This programmed identity comes in the form of compliments, honors, promotions, success, and fortune. None of it has real meaning if it depletes you as an individual and makes you a stranger to yourself.
It is why when someone tells me "how smart someone is" it sends up a red flag. The smartest kid I ever knew flunked out of college. Smart people are failing because they are trying to be smart rather than act effectively. They allow others to define them and then accept that identity as theirs, when it is at the sacrifice of their identity and often their rare talent. One of the most toxic illustrations of our collective societal insanity is “American Idol.” The fact that it is the most popular program on television is a lagging indicator of the state of our collective mental health.
Novelist Elmore Leonard says, "When you read something, and you say, 'that is really good writing,' the author is getting in the way of his story." President Barak Obama is getting in the way of his story as he feeds on the dribble from television commentators and Internet bloggers, which I understand he reads religiously. God help us if he becomes a celebrity president like JFK, and starts to believe his own celebrity defines him.
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