THE FALLACY OF HOPE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 22, 2009
* * *
“My principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you.”
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), Anglo-Irish poet, satirist and clergyman
* * *
THE AUDACITY OF HOPE EXPOSED
You that read me know my disdain for the concept of hope as compared to the idea of courage.
Courage is active and positive. Hope is passive and wishful thinking.
Courage requires doing something even if it is wrong. Hope looks to someone else to do the dirty work.
Courage operates from a position of taking control. Hope surrenders control expecting someone else to manage the outcome.
Courage entails risk, possible failure, and often setbacks. Hope places that responsibility and authority on someone else.
Courage doesn’t react to circumstances. It anticipates them and takes action. Hope shields itself from action by projecting blame when things go awry.
Courage embraces the challenge with gusto. Hope is prisoner to outcomes.
In baseball, a ground ball can be zooming at an infielder at 90 mph. He can charge the ball and embrace the challenge or sit back and play for a good hop. Should he choose the latter, chances are the runner will cross first base before his throw gets there, or he’ll be fooled by the hop and commit an error.
Major League infielders charge the ball. Amateurs often look for the good hop.
There is no audacity to hope when not structured around courage.
* * *
In my long life, it would seem increasingly so that there is little difference whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power. Neither party seems able to escape an obsession with hope.
Both parties are controlled by corporate masters through an army of lobbyists who eclipse the political democratic process by dictating the corporate will.
Eisenhower called it the “military industrial complex, but now it permeates every quadrant of American society. It is evident in the current charade on healthcare, as it was and continues to be evident in the administration's ambivalence towards the War in Afghanistan.
The agents of the puppet masters are not elected to public office but they control the day.
Barak Obama got my vote, despite being disparaged by his campaign book, “Audacity of Hope” (2006). I forgave him for this, thinking it was simply a campaign strategy to get elected, confident, once elected, he would display the courage that change necessitates.
What I see thus far feels strangely like déjà vu, or Bush all over again. Columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan claims President Obama is not a natural decider. Obama is proving the pundit correct. I have worked for such men. They see themselves as prudent not realizing they are paralyzed with fear of making a decision.
We have a president-in-training with practical no corporate decision making experience. This was also true of Abraham Lincoln, but he was a successful practicing attorney in Springfield, Illinois, and was considered reasonably wealthy when he took office.
President George W. Bush had an executive background. He turned his back on his family’s fortune (something his brother, Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, didn’t), left the northeast and went wildcatting for oil in Texas, struck it rich after many failed attempts, and established his own successful company. He became a majority owner of the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball, and continued in that capacity until he sold his interests at a handsome profit.
Bush's nemesis was the neoconservatives who owned him, including Vice President Chaney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. They talked him into a preemptive War in Iraq, when Afghanistan was where Al-Qaeda was entrenched. He is now saddled with that legacy thanks to the neocons, who have gone on their merry ways unscathed.
* * *
More than 10,000 books have been written on Lincoln. I’ve managed to read a few. I think it unfair to compare President Obama to him or his presidency. Lincoln is remembered for his eloquence, for the Emancipation Proclamation, and for winning the Civil War, but the man he was is buried in subtext.
Lincoln may have been honest, but he was also tough, some thought vicious, as he never acted in half measures.
When he was a young man he was quite a wrestler, long, sinewy, and deceptively strong. He would allow his opponent to flex his muscles, make scary, and then quickly pin him to his opponent’s embarrassment. Lincoln didn’t believe in telegraphing his moves but exploited his rival’s weakness with animal like agility.
During the Civil War, Lincoln had a pusillanimous general-in-chief of the Union Army, George Brinton McClellan, nicknamed “The Young Napoleon.” He was a man with impeccable military credentials, good breeding and flawless sophistication, but otherwise a spineless wonder when it came to making decisions on the battlefield.
McClellan was also insubordinate. Lincoln removed him and for a time was general-in-chief of the army as well as commander-in-chief of the nation. Lincoln, by all accounts, was decisive, cold, calculating, and unyielding to the enemy in his battlefield strategies. After the war, there was an effort to try him as a war criminal citing these directives.
A talent for leadership is derived from a sense of character that is not always obvious or limited by pedigree. Lincoln went deep into the ranks of his generals before he found Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman to lead his army to a bloody but decisive conclusion, one in which Grant often had huge casualties for his victories, while Sherman’s “March to the Sea” left in his wake a scorched earth.
There was nothing tentative here.
* * *
A surprising role model for our inexperienced president might be President Andrew Jackson. Jackson and Obama, at first glance, might seem like an odd couple: Jackson was crude, intemperate, could be a bully, and yet mastered the eastern establishment and became the people’s president much as Obama did in his getting elected.
The “Age of Jackson” followed the Jackson presidency.
My sense is that under the cool detachment, fine manners, savoir-faire eloquence of Obama is a man of grit that hasn’t yet been allowed to surface. He has by most estimates a fine mind, perhaps finer than most men who have held that office, but a fine mind is not enough. Nor does the job require an intellectual, which he is also said to be. "Give intellectuals everything," advises author Eric Hoffer, "but never give them power."
Jackson was far from an intellectual. He preferred his own counsel to that provided in books, no doubt influenced by the fact he was self-educated with practically no former schooling. He had fought in the Revolutionary War as a fourteen-year-old boy, and every war thereafter up to his presidency.
Jackson was a self-made man as well acquiring considerable wealth by the time he was president, having practiced law, farmed, and served in Congress. He knew Wall Street and the banking lobby in real terms, not abstractedly and academically. He would take on the banking industry and beat it at its own game.
To say Jackson was decisive is to understate his impact. He sized up his enemies and the odds and took action. It didn’t matter whether it was political opponents, members of Congress, his cabinet, eastern bankers, or foreign powers.
Lobbyist and influence peddlers were as endemic to Jackson’s Washington as they are today, but he would have none of them. He dispatched them without a second thought. Nor would he let members of his own cabinet, mostly the Washington elite, dictate his agenda.
When members of his cabinet failed to include the wife of his Secretary of War, he dissolved the cabinet, and appointed his friends. For this, his administration was known as the “spoils system.” That said every president since has benefited from the "Office of the President" that he created, making it the most powerful branch of the federal government.
* * *
President Obama, too, has surrounded himself with like-minded people, many from the financial industry that happen to be key players in the Wall Street meltdown and subsequent recession. He has also shown an inclination to media pundits, thinkers not doers, influence peddlers, not decision makers.
He would be well to note how Lincoln took office. Lincoln was wise in knowing what he did well (his strengths) and what he did not do so well (his weaknesses), appointing a cabinet of competent men who thought him a country bumpkin, and not worthy of the presidency. By doing so, he magnified his strengths and neutralized his weaknesses. In the process, he became stronger and more resilient than any member of his cabinet, and was on his way to greatness.
When we surround ourselves with others of similar weaknesses we reinforce and magnify our own. If the weakness is decision making, this can lead to the paralysis of analysis
* * *.
President Obama is making nice with Europe, and it would appear, Europe loves him for it (70 percent approval rating) far more than Americans do (50 percent approval rating) if you can believe the polls. He has made nice with Russia by withdrawing the Bush Missile Defense Shield from Eastern Europe, but in terms of quid pro quo has received nothing for the concession.
Any executive knows there is a world of difference between being nice and being effective. You can make nice when it is effective, but being effective is not always making nice. Being hated by some no matter how noble or appropriate the action is par for the course.
Jackson and Lincoln had similar challenges and acted similarly, preserving the nation at any cost. They recognized the dangers and did what was necessary, not necessarily popular. Controversy was white noise in the background. Courage was the order of the day, not hope.
* * *
With all the major problems of the nation and the world, radio talking heads and the Fox News Network have gotten President Obama’s attention. This is unfortunate. Legitimizing these chatterboxes puts the president in a bad light. I would imagine someone has advised him of this strategy. That person should be fired immediately. He or she is no friend to the administration.
Incredibly, Time (September 28, 2009) had Glenn Beck’s picture on the cover of its magazine, a person I had never heard of before. I know who Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Howard Stern are, but have never listened to them, much less this man with his tongue stuck out on the cover of Time. Wonderful!
The measure of these talking heads’ appeal, and others like them suggests we have lost our pride and dignity, our good manners and sense of proportion, our reasoned thought, and intellectual balance.
Have we lost so much confidence that we can no longer do our own thinking? Do we need these interlopers to do it for us? Are we to rely on people who short circuit the issues to lay on us their biases? They have a right to their opinions, to promulgate them in any media they prefer, but we don't have to accept them as our own. That seems bizarre, but come to think of it, this is a bizarre age.
* * *
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
DIFFERENT ENDINGS TO -- OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT
A WRITER WRITES:
A reader writes about the first and second draft of this article:
Hello Jim,
You know better what you want to say. In my humble opinion, the last paragraphs of the first version had more impact and meaning. It sounded more like your voice than the second ending.
Michael
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
It was past 3 a.m. and I thought it best to change the ending of the piece. It is the reader that should have the final say as to the integrity of the piece given his or her familiarity with the writing. In rereading, I agree with this writer.
While I'm on the subject, speaking of the immaturity of adults, I attended just last Thursday a volley ball match between a team of eighth graders from the local recreational center and my granddaughter prep school.
The rec center's team was far superior to my granddaughters, and beat her team badly. What disturbed me, however, was that the rec center's coach played only his first team nearly the whole game, while the prep team coach played all her players during the whole contest.
The rec center coach, while calling the prep school coach "dearie" after the game, said he played only to win. It seems beyond his capacity to fathom that he was in the business of building character of these young people, and that comparing and competing was secondary to this function. Sad.
HERE ARE THE TWO VERSIONS and POSTINGS:
SECOND POSTING AND VERSION TWO:
The air is not more rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual ever separated from the squalor and demands below. It is rather from a vantage point of on high that one sees more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something.
Wherever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you're talking to someone, please look that person in the eye. Don't mount a ladder and peer down on that person as if the person were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don't wear your kudos or awards like medals on your ego, but let the person sense your worth from the connection with you.
* * *
Mentoring is about helping people help themselves by showing them how to realize and harness their unique gifts. This website (www.fisherofideas.com) encourages that process. The individual's lot in life is to find out what makes that person tick, what gets that person off its bottom and do something, to have some purpose, and ultimately, effectively utilize one's inherent ability.
AUTISM REDUX
One reason we don't know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic.
What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of parents, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. A child can sense when he or she is considered a burden.
With the United States the most affluent society on the globe, it is sad to say many children are largely left in the lurch. This is not limited to the most impoverished of homes, but is a problem among the affluent as well. Neglect has no socioeconomic boundaries.
Add to this complexity many parents have failed to cross that imposing barrier of mature adulthood. My sense is that children are not victims of raging autism but inattentive parents.
Having children will not hold a loveless marriage together. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease by imploding it with unwanted guests. We have settled on the idea that making a good living is the central responsibility of the family when it is the nurturing of children. Nurturing is taken as a given when it is the most demanding of skills.
When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to give, and usually it is time and attention to the needs of children.
Adding to this spiral is the incessant drive to compare and compete with parents using their children as the instruments of their designs. Small wonder there is such problems finding one's essence, or developing the essence of one's children. The obstacles to self-realization are not new to readers, as I'm sure they have their own stories to illustrate the challenge.
* * *
FIRST POSTING AND VERSION ONE:
The air is not rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual at such a height separated from the squalor below. But rather, it is a vantage point to see more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something about it.
Whatever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you're talking to me, please look me in the eye. Don't mount a ladder and peer down on me as if I were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don't wear your kudos or awards like medals on your person, but let me sense your essence from the insight I gain from my connection with you.
* * *
The greatest reward in life is to help others help themselves, to help them to realize and harness their unique gifts. It is the purpose of these missives on this website (www.fisherofideas.com) to encourage that process.
In no way is this an attempt to have others follow in my footsteps. That said the greatest opportunity to self-realization is to compare and compete only with oneself irrespective of anyone else. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty in this regard is temptation to measure oneself in terms of others and what others have accomplished. This is a predictor of remorse and self-defeat as the irony of life is you can never be better than a poor imitation of someone else no matter what you have achieved as measured by what they have realized.
Your lot in life is to find out what makes you tick, what gets you to rise off your bottom and to do something, to be someone, to have some purpose, to effectively utilize your inherent ability.
* * *
One reason we don't know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic. What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of adults, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. Even a child can sense he or she is a burden. The most affluent society on earth has left its children largely in the lurch. Added to this complexity is that most parents have failed to cross that mantle into mature adulthood. My sense is that children, despite the statistics to the contrary, are not victims of raging autism but rather lifestyle diseases of their parents.
Given this predicament, many dysfunctional marriages have children to hold the marriage together, and implode the marriage instead. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease with such an intervention. In a compare and compete society, the most important job of breadwinners is believed to be that of making a good living with it assumed that nurturing of children is a given and will materialize as if by osmosis in the lap of affluence. Not so. When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to suffer, and it is usually time and attention to the needs of the children.
Adding to this turmoil is that of a marriage where one parent compares and competes with the other parent, finding ways to nullify his or her gain or advantage, even sabotaging the mate's effort to the confusion of the children who are witness to the drama. The obstacles to self-realization are these and every reader knows someone engaged with them at the moment. I hope it is not the reader.
* * *
WHICH VERSION DO YOU FIND MORE APPROPRIATE?
A reader writes about the first and second draft of this article:
Hello Jim,
You know better what you want to say. In my humble opinion, the last paragraphs of the first version had more impact and meaning. It sounded more like your voice than the second ending.
Michael
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
It was past 3 a.m. and I thought it best to change the ending of the piece. It is the reader that should have the final say as to the integrity of the piece given his or her familiarity with the writing. In rereading, I agree with this writer.
While I'm on the subject, speaking of the immaturity of adults, I attended just last Thursday a volley ball match between a team of eighth graders from the local recreational center and my granddaughter prep school.
The rec center's team was far superior to my granddaughters, and beat her team badly. What disturbed me, however, was that the rec center's coach played only his first team nearly the whole game, while the prep team coach played all her players during the whole contest.
The rec center coach, while calling the prep school coach "dearie" after the game, said he played only to win. It seems beyond his capacity to fathom that he was in the business of building character of these young people, and that comparing and competing was secondary to this function. Sad.
HERE ARE THE TWO VERSIONS and POSTINGS:
SECOND POSTING AND VERSION TWO:
The air is not more rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual ever separated from the squalor and demands below. It is rather from a vantage point of on high that one sees more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something.
Wherever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you're talking to someone, please look that person in the eye. Don't mount a ladder and peer down on that person as if the person were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don't wear your kudos or awards like medals on your ego, but let the person sense your worth from the connection with you.
* * *
Mentoring is about helping people help themselves by showing them how to realize and harness their unique gifts. This website (www.fisherofideas.com) encourages that process. The individual's lot in life is to find out what makes that person tick, what gets that person off its bottom and do something, to have some purpose, and ultimately, effectively utilize one's inherent ability.
AUTISM REDUX
One reason we don't know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic.
What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of parents, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. A child can sense when he or she is considered a burden.
With the United States the most affluent society on the globe, it is sad to say many children are largely left in the lurch. This is not limited to the most impoverished of homes, but is a problem among the affluent as well. Neglect has no socioeconomic boundaries.
Add to this complexity many parents have failed to cross that imposing barrier of mature adulthood. My sense is that children are not victims of raging autism but inattentive parents.
Having children will not hold a loveless marriage together. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease by imploding it with unwanted guests. We have settled on the idea that making a good living is the central responsibility of the family when it is the nurturing of children. Nurturing is taken as a given when it is the most demanding of skills.
When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to give, and usually it is time and attention to the needs of children.
Adding to this spiral is the incessant drive to compare and compete with parents using their children as the instruments of their designs. Small wonder there is such problems finding one's essence, or developing the essence of one's children. The obstacles to self-realization are not new to readers, as I'm sure they have their own stories to illustrate the challenge.
* * *
FIRST POSTING AND VERSION ONE:
The air is not rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual at such a height separated from the squalor below. But rather, it is a vantage point to see more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something about it.
Whatever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you're talking to me, please look me in the eye. Don't mount a ladder and peer down on me as if I were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don't wear your kudos or awards like medals on your person, but let me sense your essence from the insight I gain from my connection with you.
* * *
The greatest reward in life is to help others help themselves, to help them to realize and harness their unique gifts. It is the purpose of these missives on this website (www.fisherofideas.com) to encourage that process.
In no way is this an attempt to have others follow in my footsteps. That said the greatest opportunity to self-realization is to compare and compete only with oneself irrespective of anyone else. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty in this regard is temptation to measure oneself in terms of others and what others have accomplished. This is a predictor of remorse and self-defeat as the irony of life is you can never be better than a poor imitation of someone else no matter what you have achieved as measured by what they have realized.
Your lot in life is to find out what makes you tick, what gets you to rise off your bottom and to do something, to be someone, to have some purpose, to effectively utilize your inherent ability.
* * *
One reason we don't know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic. What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of adults, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. Even a child can sense he or she is a burden. The most affluent society on earth has left its children largely in the lurch. Added to this complexity is that most parents have failed to cross that mantle into mature adulthood. My sense is that children, despite the statistics to the contrary, are not victims of raging autism but rather lifestyle diseases of their parents.
Given this predicament, many dysfunctional marriages have children to hold the marriage together, and implode the marriage instead. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease with such an intervention. In a compare and compete society, the most important job of breadwinners is believed to be that of making a good living with it assumed that nurturing of children is a given and will materialize as if by osmosis in the lap of affluence. Not so. When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to suffer, and it is usually time and attention to the needs of the children.
Adding to this turmoil is that of a marriage where one parent compares and competes with the other parent, finding ways to nullify his or her gain or advantage, even sabotaging the mate's effort to the confusion of the children who are witness to the drama. The obstacles to self-realization are these and every reader knows someone engaged with them at the moment. I hope it is not the reader.
* * *
WHICH VERSION DO YOU FIND MORE APPROPRIATE?
THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT!
THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT---from the pages of CONFIDENT THINKING
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 17, 2009
REFERENCE:
My computer developed multiple viruses. For more than two weeks, I was unable to transcribe my thoughts generated during my daily walks. A strange thing happened. Nothing came to me as I walked. My computer is now healthy. Wondering has returned.
We use the word “virus” with our computer when it goes on the blink as if a computer is a living thing, while we use engineering terms to describe our mechanistic society. This unconscious process gives psychological identity to the inanimate, and then leads to our entrapment in its confinement. Notice how we talk about thinking outside the box, when it is the metaphor of the box that is the structure of our thought.
* * *
Those who read me know I process the past in terms of a personal narrative. In so doing, I leave out many things that don’t readily fit into the story telling. By focusing on ordinary events within the parameters of my experience, I note things we usually take for granted or leave out being overwhelmed by the problem solving.
Stories have a way of getting inside such obstacles to reveal truths buried in the perturbations. A wonderer exploits this advantage, leaving it up to the reader to assess its relevance or the quality of the wondering.
* * *
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
A person was telling me the other day about a set of boy twins, age four, who appeared much slower than a set of girl twins of the same age of another family. She picked to pieces the differences between the twins in quite knowing terms, implying something was wrong with the boys. But is there? How can we be sure?
Boys are typically slower than girls out of the starting blocks of life. Yet medical science on slim evidence has placed many parents near panic with the idea that autism is a pervasive condition.
Psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim some forty years ago got it all wrong when he headed the prestigious Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. He treated autism as a behavioral and psychological condition when understood today to be a brain disorder, a disorder nonetheless that is not clearly understood.
Autism has become the catchall phrase to mask developmental concerns. Neurological brain dysfunction is difficult to identify, yet often diagnosed by physicians and psychologists arbitrarily on behavioral evidence, alone. A series of qualifying autistic related indices are subjective at best and imprecise at worse, and can be misleading. It is therefore wise for parents to seek a second and third prognosis before they go into a panic.
We are an explanatory culture good at describing our problems but not necessarily proficient at defining or resolving them. Currently, autism is on the front burner. It is a condition the medical profession is reporting with increasing frequency, especially with regard to its appearance in boys, but is this reporting reliable?
Parents trust the authority of medicine, and well that they should, when medicine is on solid ground. In the case of autism, however, it remains something of a medical mystery. The AMA has not been too candid about this fact. Pharmaceuticals are being used with autism as with Alzheimer’s, and we know how little is known about that disease.
What is known is that some children are late or circuitous bloomers. This is but one example.
DIRK DEVLIN, A STORY OF LATE AND AMBIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT
Buried in all these statistics and the anguish caused by them is a basic cultural phenomenon that has no limitations. It is the tendency to compare and compete, to view one child against another child as to how those respective children embrace and deal with life.
There is a real danger of self-fulfilling prophecy by designating and treating some children as fast and other children as slow learners. I am not at all certain these boys are slow. It reminds me of the case of Dirk Devlin.
* * *
Dirk was considered slow as a boy coming from a dysfunctional situation. Out of the trauma of his early existence, he turned out to be a loner, which he remained during his developmental years.
For the first five years of his life, he lived with foster parents or relatives but not with his birth parents. His father was wild and mainly unemployed, and his mother was in a sanitarium having suffered a mental breakdown after having three children in four years, and weighing only eighty pounds on a five-one frame.
Dirk lived with his great aunt and great uncle during part of this period, and found himself with many of his cousins, as several of the parents of these children were in various states of divorce, separation or family abandonment.
His great aunt owned and ran a tenement house with ample space for all these relatives, but not sufficient energy for the parenting. His great uncle ran a successful commercial roofing business.
The aunt had a special affection for Dirk as she had also reared his father, who was left parentless when his mother died in childbirth and his father took off never to be seen again. She could see Dirk was a child who preferred to be alone finding no reason to force him to play with the other children.
Not only was he a loner, but once he started to school he refused to talk. The nuns designated him as slow and put him in the slow section of the class. He found this strange as he identified with the more alert students, and loved listening to them recite in class. He loved school. He found it safe, secure, orderly, and controlled. It had structure something he had not experienced before.
Written work delighted him but he still refused to participate in class. Was this shyness? Could it be insecurity? Did he fear being embarrassed? That is what the nuns concluded, so they left him alone.
* * *
Years later, looking back, Dirk decided it wasn’t any of these things. He had a hunger to learn and felt no advantage when he was talking. Even in that tenement house he would watch the other children, study the way they behaved and marvel at some of the things they would do and say, but he had no desire to join them in the doing.
A big child for his age, he was always thought to be older than he was as he was taller and huskier than most others of his generation being six foot by the age of fourteen and still growing despite having a mother of five-one and a father of five-seven. When you are tall as a boy, people tend to think you are more mature than you are. He suffered for that perception, as he was quite immature.
Perhaps Dirk's greatest blessing was that his great aunt and mother never attempted to change him but accepted him as he was. The result was that he changed as his interior dial or center developed, which would become the key to his idiosyncratic character.
* * *
Dirk never became competitive, never cared to be anyone else, never looked for a hero with whom to identify, and for this skewed orientation away from the norm he became an unusually strong personality, a conundrum and frustration to many.
The good nuns taught him he was not on earth to punish other with his talents or bother them with his problems, but to develop his talents and use them to the benefit of others. It was their job as educators to identify these talents, give them life and expression, and define their usefulness.
Nuns, he discovered, were not without venial subjectivity.
Dirk might receive the highest grade on a test, but was apt to hear, “Nice job, Seamus,“ as the nuns (and his mother) preferred his given name, "but what a surprise!" Even his most supportive nun, his eighth grade teacher, who applauded his skills as a basketball player and budding scholar of Catholic doctrine, drew the line when it came to special competitions.
The sixth, seventh and eighth grade students participated in a spelling bee elimination competition to see who would represent the school in the County Spelling Bee Contest. Dirk won the competition. Expected to win was John, a genuine prodigy, a gifted student, and a classical pianist of the first rank.
Dirk's teacher and the school principal took Dirk aside and sat him down and said, “You won the contest, Seamus, but we think we will have a better chance of winning the county contest if John represents the school.”
A puzzled expression crossed Dirk’s face as he attempted to process this information. “Stir, I don’t understand. I thought I won the contest?”
“Well, let us put it this way,” his teacher told him, “it seems all the easy words came your way, and all the hard words came to John.”
Anger welled up in him; anger was a dominant humor to his personality. He wanted to say, but Sister, I knew all the words, every one of them. He didn’t say anything out of respect for this special nun whom he loved.
He was discovering that he had a good memory; that he could see in his mind a page reference in a book, or find a quote without much trouble.
It was a gift his mother had, but a talent that had gotten him into trouble when he was at university. Professors thought he was cheating when clearly he was not. It wasn’t confined to printed words. He could remember lectures nearly verbatim, and what people had said months ago, but now denied. It amazed him how often people lied, how easily they would forget what they had said before, as if they had never said it.
* * *
Disconcerted by the nuns' put down, but also relieved, he now recalled what his mother had said: “You are high strung, Seamus. You don’t handle stress well. You must be better prepared than anyone else because if you’re not the floodgates will open and all hell will break lose reducing you to a blabbering idiot.”
This proved true years later in an organic chemistry test at university. Dirk went into the test with an “A” average, looked at the test, and panicked, getting a 52 percent on an “F.” He was shocked and dismayed but had the temerity to visit his professor. “I think I lost it,” he confessed.
“Yes, I think you did,” his professor agreed, taking out his grade book. “Your lowest grade before was a 92, and a 52 on this test. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re here to see what we can do about it, is that right?”
Dirk remained silent.
“Well, sir,” the professor continued, “I’ll put it this way. You no longer have an ‘A’ average, which is 90 percent, averaging this grade into your previous tests, but you’re close. That said if you average 90 percent or more on the rest of your tests this semester I’ll omit this grade from your average, fair enough?”
That surprising concession added motivation. The next test was quite different than any of the previous tests. There were only three problems, but the problems involved equations that took up more than a page each with the requirement of not only the correct sequence of reactions but also the suitable catalysts to produce the ultimate product in the end.
It was a conceptual framework rather than a regurgitation of formulae as had been the case before. A light went on in Dirk’s head from the beginning with him breezing through the test to finish before anyone else. He got a 100 percent with the next closest score 72 percent and the class average 39 percent.
He made an appointment to see the professor trying to understand the departure from the professor's previous format.
“I gave that type of test,” he conceded, “because I could see where you panicked. Then I wondered if my students were getting a grasp of organic chemistry as it applied to the real world of industry. Your performance on the previous test suggested I had my work cut out for me. How do you explain your turnaround?”
“I studied especially hard.”
“No, I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“There is a lot to remember in an organic chemistry course and both the professor and student have only limited time. Straight memory was difficult for me as a student. I think it is for you as well.” Dirk nodded but had no idea where this was going.
“That is because we have to see the relationship of the equations to the process. We find with straight memory it is difficult to recall the connection of isolated equations, am I right?” Dirk nodded again out of politeness, but not conviction. Sensing this, the professor added, “There is something I want you to take forward in your life.”
“What is that?”
“Conceptual thinking is the building blocks to understanding of anything, and fundamental to thinking in chemistry." He laughed. "A long time ago when I was a student a professor had this kind of discussion with me. It made sense to me then. I hope it makes sense to you now. It is probably why you have a good memory."
Surprise cross Dirk's face. "You showed off some on this test." This caused Dirk to squirm. "I'm speaking of the listing of alternative catalysts and their concomitant diversions from the desired product. That little conceit reflected your exhilaration, as if to say, 'I get it!' I smiled when I saw it."
The professor continued. "The test you failed didn't show this premise." He studied Dirk. "Why do you think that test threw you off? Do you know?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want to share that with me?”
“Not really. It’s so stupid. When I get upset my mind seems to leave me. If you want to know the truth, I was surprised with my 52 because I finished the test in a fog. I thought I had gotten a zero.”
* * *
Dirk thanked his professor and then went back to his dormitory room. He sat there and thought about what the professor had said. He wondered if it were true. Then he remembered something that had happened in high school.
In a class in advanced mathematics covering analytical and solid geometry and spherical trigonometry, his math teacher, whom he thought was the best teacher he ever had, gave the class a national test at midterm of the first semester of that year. His teacher had such a gift at explaining mathematical concepts that Dirk looked forward to each session.
When the results came back, the math teacher congratulated the students on how well they had done finding the majority in the class of only twelve students far exceeded the national average. Dirk, however, did poorly on the test, and was thoroughly flummoxed.
He went to see his math teacher who assured him that the test would not be averaged into his grade. “I wanted to see how we stacked up with advanced students across the country,” the math teacher said, “and I was generally pleased with the results.” This burned into Dirk’s psyche as if he were branded, which he thought he had been.
“What happened, Dirk?”
“The only thing I can say is that I was premed for the test but after I got to the third or fourth problem my mind went blank. I didn’t even finished.”
“I noticed that.” Dirk just sat there still as a mouse. “Don’t worry about it.”
As he left the room, he repeated to himself, don’t worry about it! Easy for him to say. He couldn't wait for football practice where he could hit somebody. He wondered, am I a learner or a knower, a pretender or for real? I thought I was learning mathematics. Was I kidding myself?
* * *
Towards the end of that year Dirk’s math class had another national test. Dirk finished in the 97 percentile, tied with the highest score in the class. He felt good about himself and shared it with his best friend who was also in the class.
His friend said, “You should have done well.”
“Why?”
“It was the same test we took last semester.”
“It was?”
“You didn’t recognize it?”
“No.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I mean it. I didn’t recognize the test.”
“Okay, okay.”
* * *
Dirk went back to his math teacher who was beaming as he approached. “How do you feel about yourself now?”
Incredulously, Dirk said, “Did you give us the same test again?”
“As a matter-of-fact, I did.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I did it because I wanted to see what you would do with a second chance.”
“You did it for me?”
“No, not only for you, but you have done the best of the lot. You set the curve, young man. What did you learn from this?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I've had you as a student for two years. I think it tells us something about you.”
“What is that?”
“You’re extremely intense, extremely serious. I’ve never once seen you relaxed or joking around in or out of class. I know you’re an athlete. I also know you hate that tag.”
“How do you know that?”
“Believe me it shows. You want others to respect you not only for playing with some kind of a ball but as a student, as a scholar.”
“That shows, too?”
“Oh, yes. You want to be taken seriously and have strong opinions. This can be frightening to some. They see your strengths and not your weaknesses, making matters worse, they exaggerate your strengths.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, I imagine it’s a matter of power. You’re a tall good-looking boy, a good athlete, active in extra curricular activities, honor student, and seem to have everything. Others notice that. It can be quite intimidating creating envy, jealousy and even fear. When people fear you, watch out.”
“But why? I don't see myself that way.”
“Because they don’t see the weaknesses in you that I do, because they only see your strengths and your advantages.”
“Well, I don’t plan on changing.”
“That is obvious, but because of this and your intensity I’m afraid you’re going to walk into walls. Most of us compare and compete with others, and you simply won’t, worse yet, you won’t apologize for not. It makes you look arrogant as well as confident.”
“But I’m not that confident, and I don't see myself as arrogant.”
“Others would differ with you on that. They take a bead on others as to how they measure up, but you don't. You only compete with yourself. You demonstrated that last fall after doing poorly on the national test. You were the only one that came to me for an explanation, not in false humility, but to find out what was wrong and to correct it. You are your own laboratory. That is unique.”
“But is it right?”
“It is not a question of being right or not, but it’s you.”
“What advice do you give me?”
“I’m not like you, Dirk, but I admire integrity. I say despite the difficulties I think you will encounter, go for it! We need more like you and less like the rest of us. You’re flawed but authentic if I make myself clear. I suspect that will be your cross as well as your blessing.”
“Because I’m not going to change, is that it?”
Dirk’s math teacher didn’t answer. He put his papers in his briefcase signaling the session was over.
THE KEY TO IT ALL, MENTORS!
A person has the life that he has mainly because of his mentors along the way.
These people introduce the person to him or herself. They are most effective when they don’t try to change the person but instead identify the person to his or her uniqueness and then attempt to harness that uniqueness in some way.
There are people in positions of authority that attempt to suppress this uniqueness, and to make the person fit into a previously cast mode. The individual should be alert to such a possibility and to act accordingly.
Our inclination is to appreciate our true gifts only when others we respect point them out to us. How sad it is when this never happens.
If the central thrust of one's life is to cue on the accomplishments of others, imitating their progress, chances are one will never discover one's own nascent talents, but be a poor imitation of the other.
Psychiatrists Drs. Willard and Marguerite Beecher state this quite emphatically in “Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity” (1966):
“Competition enslaves and degrades the mind. It is on of the most prevalent and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who is devoid of originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!” (p. 56)
On the other hand, if someone recognizes your uniqueness, and breathes life into that uniqueness, you will climb to unimagined heights. We are always students in our quest for self-realization.
* * *
The air is not more rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual ever separated from the squalor and demands below. It is rather from a vantage point of on high that one sees more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something.
Wherever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you’re talking to someone, please look that person in the eye. Don’t mount a ladder and peer down on that person as if the person were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don’t wear your kudos or awards like medals on your ego, but let the person sense your worth from the connection with you.
* * *
Mentoring is about helping people help themselves by showing them how to realize and harness their unique gifts. This website (www.fisherofideas.com) encourages that process. The individual's lot in life is to find out what makes that person tick, what gets that person off its bottom and do something, to have some purpose, and ultimately, effectively utilize one's inherent ability.
AUTISM REDUX
One reason we don’t know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic.
What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of parents, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. A child can sense when he or she is considered a burden.
With the United States the most affluent society on the globe, it is sad to say many children are largely left in the lurch. This is not limited to the most impoverished of homes, but is a problem among the affluent as well. Neglect has no socioeconomic boundaries.
Add to this complexity many parents have failed to cross that imposing barrier of mature adulthood. My sense is that children are not victims of raging autism but inattentive parents.
Having children will not hold a loveless marriage together. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease by imploding it with unwanted guests. We have settled on the idea that making a good living is the central responsibility of the family when it is the nurturing of children. Nurturing is taken as a given when it is the most demanding of skills.
When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to give, and usually it is time and attention to the needs of children.
Adding to this spiral is the incessant drive to compare and compete with parents using their children as the instruments of their designs. Small wonder there is such problems finding one's essence, or developing the essence of one's children. The obstacles to self-realization are not new to readers, as I'm sure they have their own stories to illustrate the challenge.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 17, 2009
REFERENCE:
My computer developed multiple viruses. For more than two weeks, I was unable to transcribe my thoughts generated during my daily walks. A strange thing happened. Nothing came to me as I walked. My computer is now healthy. Wondering has returned.
We use the word “virus” with our computer when it goes on the blink as if a computer is a living thing, while we use engineering terms to describe our mechanistic society. This unconscious process gives psychological identity to the inanimate, and then leads to our entrapment in its confinement. Notice how we talk about thinking outside the box, when it is the metaphor of the box that is the structure of our thought.
* * *
Those who read me know I process the past in terms of a personal narrative. In so doing, I leave out many things that don’t readily fit into the story telling. By focusing on ordinary events within the parameters of my experience, I note things we usually take for granted or leave out being overwhelmed by the problem solving.
Stories have a way of getting inside such obstacles to reveal truths buried in the perturbations. A wonderer exploits this advantage, leaving it up to the reader to assess its relevance or the quality of the wondering.
* * *
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
A person was telling me the other day about a set of boy twins, age four, who appeared much slower than a set of girl twins of the same age of another family. She picked to pieces the differences between the twins in quite knowing terms, implying something was wrong with the boys. But is there? How can we be sure?
Boys are typically slower than girls out of the starting blocks of life. Yet medical science on slim evidence has placed many parents near panic with the idea that autism is a pervasive condition.
Psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim some forty years ago got it all wrong when he headed the prestigious Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. He treated autism as a behavioral and psychological condition when understood today to be a brain disorder, a disorder nonetheless that is not clearly understood.
Autism has become the catchall phrase to mask developmental concerns. Neurological brain dysfunction is difficult to identify, yet often diagnosed by physicians and psychologists arbitrarily on behavioral evidence, alone. A series of qualifying autistic related indices are subjective at best and imprecise at worse, and can be misleading. It is therefore wise for parents to seek a second and third prognosis before they go into a panic.
We are an explanatory culture good at describing our problems but not necessarily proficient at defining or resolving them. Currently, autism is on the front burner. It is a condition the medical profession is reporting with increasing frequency, especially with regard to its appearance in boys, but is this reporting reliable?
Parents trust the authority of medicine, and well that they should, when medicine is on solid ground. In the case of autism, however, it remains something of a medical mystery. The AMA has not been too candid about this fact. Pharmaceuticals are being used with autism as with Alzheimer’s, and we know how little is known about that disease.
What is known is that some children are late or circuitous bloomers. This is but one example.
DIRK DEVLIN, A STORY OF LATE AND AMBIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT
Buried in all these statistics and the anguish caused by them is a basic cultural phenomenon that has no limitations. It is the tendency to compare and compete, to view one child against another child as to how those respective children embrace and deal with life.
There is a real danger of self-fulfilling prophecy by designating and treating some children as fast and other children as slow learners. I am not at all certain these boys are slow. It reminds me of the case of Dirk Devlin.
* * *
Dirk was considered slow as a boy coming from a dysfunctional situation. Out of the trauma of his early existence, he turned out to be a loner, which he remained during his developmental years.
For the first five years of his life, he lived with foster parents or relatives but not with his birth parents. His father was wild and mainly unemployed, and his mother was in a sanitarium having suffered a mental breakdown after having three children in four years, and weighing only eighty pounds on a five-one frame.
Dirk lived with his great aunt and great uncle during part of this period, and found himself with many of his cousins, as several of the parents of these children were in various states of divorce, separation or family abandonment.
His great aunt owned and ran a tenement house with ample space for all these relatives, but not sufficient energy for the parenting. His great uncle ran a successful commercial roofing business.
The aunt had a special affection for Dirk as she had also reared his father, who was left parentless when his mother died in childbirth and his father took off never to be seen again. She could see Dirk was a child who preferred to be alone finding no reason to force him to play with the other children.
Not only was he a loner, but once he started to school he refused to talk. The nuns designated him as slow and put him in the slow section of the class. He found this strange as he identified with the more alert students, and loved listening to them recite in class. He loved school. He found it safe, secure, orderly, and controlled. It had structure something he had not experienced before.
Written work delighted him but he still refused to participate in class. Was this shyness? Could it be insecurity? Did he fear being embarrassed? That is what the nuns concluded, so they left him alone.
* * *
Years later, looking back, Dirk decided it wasn’t any of these things. He had a hunger to learn and felt no advantage when he was talking. Even in that tenement house he would watch the other children, study the way they behaved and marvel at some of the things they would do and say, but he had no desire to join them in the doing.
A big child for his age, he was always thought to be older than he was as he was taller and huskier than most others of his generation being six foot by the age of fourteen and still growing despite having a mother of five-one and a father of five-seven. When you are tall as a boy, people tend to think you are more mature than you are. He suffered for that perception, as he was quite immature.
Perhaps Dirk's greatest blessing was that his great aunt and mother never attempted to change him but accepted him as he was. The result was that he changed as his interior dial or center developed, which would become the key to his idiosyncratic character.
* * *
Dirk never became competitive, never cared to be anyone else, never looked for a hero with whom to identify, and for this skewed orientation away from the norm he became an unusually strong personality, a conundrum and frustration to many.
The good nuns taught him he was not on earth to punish other with his talents or bother them with his problems, but to develop his talents and use them to the benefit of others. It was their job as educators to identify these talents, give them life and expression, and define their usefulness.
Nuns, he discovered, were not without venial subjectivity.
Dirk might receive the highest grade on a test, but was apt to hear, “Nice job, Seamus,“ as the nuns (and his mother) preferred his given name, "but what a surprise!" Even his most supportive nun, his eighth grade teacher, who applauded his skills as a basketball player and budding scholar of Catholic doctrine, drew the line when it came to special competitions.
The sixth, seventh and eighth grade students participated in a spelling bee elimination competition to see who would represent the school in the County Spelling Bee Contest. Dirk won the competition. Expected to win was John, a genuine prodigy, a gifted student, and a classical pianist of the first rank.
Dirk's teacher and the school principal took Dirk aside and sat him down and said, “You won the contest, Seamus, but we think we will have a better chance of winning the county contest if John represents the school.”
A puzzled expression crossed Dirk’s face as he attempted to process this information. “Stir, I don’t understand. I thought I won the contest?”
“Well, let us put it this way,” his teacher told him, “it seems all the easy words came your way, and all the hard words came to John.”
Anger welled up in him; anger was a dominant humor to his personality. He wanted to say, but Sister, I knew all the words, every one of them. He didn’t say anything out of respect for this special nun whom he loved.
He was discovering that he had a good memory; that he could see in his mind a page reference in a book, or find a quote without much trouble.
It was a gift his mother had, but a talent that had gotten him into trouble when he was at university. Professors thought he was cheating when clearly he was not. It wasn’t confined to printed words. He could remember lectures nearly verbatim, and what people had said months ago, but now denied. It amazed him how often people lied, how easily they would forget what they had said before, as if they had never said it.
* * *
Disconcerted by the nuns' put down, but also relieved, he now recalled what his mother had said: “You are high strung, Seamus. You don’t handle stress well. You must be better prepared than anyone else because if you’re not the floodgates will open and all hell will break lose reducing you to a blabbering idiot.”
This proved true years later in an organic chemistry test at university. Dirk went into the test with an “A” average, looked at the test, and panicked, getting a 52 percent on an “F.” He was shocked and dismayed but had the temerity to visit his professor. “I think I lost it,” he confessed.
“Yes, I think you did,” his professor agreed, taking out his grade book. “Your lowest grade before was a 92, and a 52 on this test. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re here to see what we can do about it, is that right?”
Dirk remained silent.
“Well, sir,” the professor continued, “I’ll put it this way. You no longer have an ‘A’ average, which is 90 percent, averaging this grade into your previous tests, but you’re close. That said if you average 90 percent or more on the rest of your tests this semester I’ll omit this grade from your average, fair enough?”
That surprising concession added motivation. The next test was quite different than any of the previous tests. There were only three problems, but the problems involved equations that took up more than a page each with the requirement of not only the correct sequence of reactions but also the suitable catalysts to produce the ultimate product in the end.
It was a conceptual framework rather than a regurgitation of formulae as had been the case before. A light went on in Dirk’s head from the beginning with him breezing through the test to finish before anyone else. He got a 100 percent with the next closest score 72 percent and the class average 39 percent.
He made an appointment to see the professor trying to understand the departure from the professor's previous format.
“I gave that type of test,” he conceded, “because I could see where you panicked. Then I wondered if my students were getting a grasp of organic chemistry as it applied to the real world of industry. Your performance on the previous test suggested I had my work cut out for me. How do you explain your turnaround?”
“I studied especially hard.”
“No, I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“There is a lot to remember in an organic chemistry course and both the professor and student have only limited time. Straight memory was difficult for me as a student. I think it is for you as well.” Dirk nodded but had no idea where this was going.
“That is because we have to see the relationship of the equations to the process. We find with straight memory it is difficult to recall the connection of isolated equations, am I right?” Dirk nodded again out of politeness, but not conviction. Sensing this, the professor added, “There is something I want you to take forward in your life.”
“What is that?”
“Conceptual thinking is the building blocks to understanding of anything, and fundamental to thinking in chemistry." He laughed. "A long time ago when I was a student a professor had this kind of discussion with me. It made sense to me then. I hope it makes sense to you now. It is probably why you have a good memory."
Surprise cross Dirk's face. "You showed off some on this test." This caused Dirk to squirm. "I'm speaking of the listing of alternative catalysts and their concomitant diversions from the desired product. That little conceit reflected your exhilaration, as if to say, 'I get it!' I smiled when I saw it."
The professor continued. "The test you failed didn't show this premise." He studied Dirk. "Why do you think that test threw you off? Do you know?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want to share that with me?”
“Not really. It’s so stupid. When I get upset my mind seems to leave me. If you want to know the truth, I was surprised with my 52 because I finished the test in a fog. I thought I had gotten a zero.”
* * *
Dirk thanked his professor and then went back to his dormitory room. He sat there and thought about what the professor had said. He wondered if it were true. Then he remembered something that had happened in high school.
In a class in advanced mathematics covering analytical and solid geometry and spherical trigonometry, his math teacher, whom he thought was the best teacher he ever had, gave the class a national test at midterm of the first semester of that year. His teacher had such a gift at explaining mathematical concepts that Dirk looked forward to each session.
When the results came back, the math teacher congratulated the students on how well they had done finding the majority in the class of only twelve students far exceeded the national average. Dirk, however, did poorly on the test, and was thoroughly flummoxed.
He went to see his math teacher who assured him that the test would not be averaged into his grade. “I wanted to see how we stacked up with advanced students across the country,” the math teacher said, “and I was generally pleased with the results.” This burned into Dirk’s psyche as if he were branded, which he thought he had been.
“What happened, Dirk?”
“The only thing I can say is that I was premed for the test but after I got to the third or fourth problem my mind went blank. I didn’t even finished.”
“I noticed that.” Dirk just sat there still as a mouse. “Don’t worry about it.”
As he left the room, he repeated to himself, don’t worry about it! Easy for him to say. He couldn't wait for football practice where he could hit somebody. He wondered, am I a learner or a knower, a pretender or for real? I thought I was learning mathematics. Was I kidding myself?
* * *
Towards the end of that year Dirk’s math class had another national test. Dirk finished in the 97 percentile, tied with the highest score in the class. He felt good about himself and shared it with his best friend who was also in the class.
His friend said, “You should have done well.”
“Why?”
“It was the same test we took last semester.”
“It was?”
“You didn’t recognize it?”
“No.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I mean it. I didn’t recognize the test.”
“Okay, okay.”
* * *
Dirk went back to his math teacher who was beaming as he approached. “How do you feel about yourself now?”
Incredulously, Dirk said, “Did you give us the same test again?”
“As a matter-of-fact, I did.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I did it because I wanted to see what you would do with a second chance.”
“You did it for me?”
“No, not only for you, but you have done the best of the lot. You set the curve, young man. What did you learn from this?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I've had you as a student for two years. I think it tells us something about you.”
“What is that?”
“You’re extremely intense, extremely serious. I’ve never once seen you relaxed or joking around in or out of class. I know you’re an athlete. I also know you hate that tag.”
“How do you know that?”
“Believe me it shows. You want others to respect you not only for playing with some kind of a ball but as a student, as a scholar.”
“That shows, too?”
“Oh, yes. You want to be taken seriously and have strong opinions. This can be frightening to some. They see your strengths and not your weaknesses, making matters worse, they exaggerate your strengths.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, I imagine it’s a matter of power. You’re a tall good-looking boy, a good athlete, active in extra curricular activities, honor student, and seem to have everything. Others notice that. It can be quite intimidating creating envy, jealousy and even fear. When people fear you, watch out.”
“But why? I don't see myself that way.”
“Because they don’t see the weaknesses in you that I do, because they only see your strengths and your advantages.”
“Well, I don’t plan on changing.”
“That is obvious, but because of this and your intensity I’m afraid you’re going to walk into walls. Most of us compare and compete with others, and you simply won’t, worse yet, you won’t apologize for not. It makes you look arrogant as well as confident.”
“But I’m not that confident, and I don't see myself as arrogant.”
“Others would differ with you on that. They take a bead on others as to how they measure up, but you don't. You only compete with yourself. You demonstrated that last fall after doing poorly on the national test. You were the only one that came to me for an explanation, not in false humility, but to find out what was wrong and to correct it. You are your own laboratory. That is unique.”
“But is it right?”
“It is not a question of being right or not, but it’s you.”
“What advice do you give me?”
“I’m not like you, Dirk, but I admire integrity. I say despite the difficulties I think you will encounter, go for it! We need more like you and less like the rest of us. You’re flawed but authentic if I make myself clear. I suspect that will be your cross as well as your blessing.”
“Because I’m not going to change, is that it?”
Dirk’s math teacher didn’t answer. He put his papers in his briefcase signaling the session was over.
THE KEY TO IT ALL, MENTORS!
A person has the life that he has mainly because of his mentors along the way.
These people introduce the person to him or herself. They are most effective when they don’t try to change the person but instead identify the person to his or her uniqueness and then attempt to harness that uniqueness in some way.
There are people in positions of authority that attempt to suppress this uniqueness, and to make the person fit into a previously cast mode. The individual should be alert to such a possibility and to act accordingly.
Our inclination is to appreciate our true gifts only when others we respect point them out to us. How sad it is when this never happens.
If the central thrust of one's life is to cue on the accomplishments of others, imitating their progress, chances are one will never discover one's own nascent talents, but be a poor imitation of the other.
Psychiatrists Drs. Willard and Marguerite Beecher state this quite emphatically in “Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity” (1966):
“Competition enslaves and degrades the mind. It is on of the most prevalent and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who is devoid of originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!” (p. 56)
On the other hand, if someone recognizes your uniqueness, and breathes life into that uniqueness, you will climb to unimagined heights. We are always students in our quest for self-realization.
* * *
The air is not more rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual ever separated from the squalor and demands below. It is rather from a vantage point of on high that one sees more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something.
Wherever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you’re talking to someone, please look that person in the eye. Don’t mount a ladder and peer down on that person as if the person were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don’t wear your kudos or awards like medals on your ego, but let the person sense your worth from the connection with you.
* * *
Mentoring is about helping people help themselves by showing them how to realize and harness their unique gifts. This website (www.fisherofideas.com) encourages that process. The individual's lot in life is to find out what makes that person tick, what gets that person off its bottom and do something, to have some purpose, and ultimately, effectively utilize one's inherent ability.
AUTISM REDUX
One reason we don’t know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic.
What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of parents, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. A child can sense when he or she is considered a burden.
With the United States the most affluent society on the globe, it is sad to say many children are largely left in the lurch. This is not limited to the most impoverished of homes, but is a problem among the affluent as well. Neglect has no socioeconomic boundaries.
Add to this complexity many parents have failed to cross that imposing barrier of mature adulthood. My sense is that children are not victims of raging autism but inattentive parents.
Having children will not hold a loveless marriage together. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease by imploding it with unwanted guests. We have settled on the idea that making a good living is the central responsibility of the family when it is the nurturing of children. Nurturing is taken as a given when it is the most demanding of skills.
When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to give, and usually it is time and attention to the needs of children.
Adding to this spiral is the incessant drive to compare and compete with parents using their children as the instruments of their designs. Small wonder there is such problems finding one's essence, or developing the essence of one's children. The obstacles to self-realization are not new to readers, as I'm sure they have their own stories to illustrate the challenge.
* * *
Friday, October 16, 2009
OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION, PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT!
THE OBSTACLES TO SELF-REALIZATION,PREDICTORS OF SELF-DEFEAT---from the pages of CONFIDENT THINKING
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 16, 2009
REFERENCE:
My computer developed multiple viruses. For more than two weeks, I was unable to transcribe my thoughts generated during my daily walks. A strange thing happened. Nothing came to me as I walked. My computer is now healthy. Wondering has returned.
We use the word “virus” with our computer when it goes on the blink as if a computer is a living thing, while we use engineering terms to describe our mechanistic society. This unconscious process gives psychological identity to the inanimate, and then leads to our entrapment in its confinement. Notice how we talk about thinking outside the box, when it is the metaphore of the box that is the structure of our thought.
* * *
Those who read me know I process the past in terms of a personal narrative. In so doing, I leave out many things that don’t readily fit into the story telling. By focusing on ordinary events within the parameters of my experience, I note things we usually take for granted or leave out being overwhelmed by the problem solving.
Stories have a way of getting inside such obstacles to reveal truths buried in the perturbations. A wonderer exploits this advantage, leaving it up to the reader to assess its relevance or the quality of the wondering.
* * *
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
A person was telling me the other day about a set of boy twins, age four, who appeared much slower than a set of girl twins of the same age of another family. She picked to pieces the differences between the twins in quite knowing terms, implying something was wrong with the boys. But is there? How can we be sure?
Boys are typically slower than girls out of the starting blocks of life. Yet medical science on slim evidence has placed many parents near panic with the idea that autism is a pervasive condition.
Psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim some forty years ago got it all wrong when he headed the prestigious Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. He treated autism as a behavioral and psychological condition when understood today to be a brain disorder, a disorder nonetheless that is not clearly understood.
Autism has become the catchall phrase to mask developmental concerns. Neurological brain dysfunction is difficult to identify, yet often diagnosed by physicians and psychologists arbitrarily on behavioral evidence, alone. A series of qualifying autistic related indices are subjective at best and imprecise at worse, and can be misleading. It is therefore wise for parents to seek a second and third prognosis before they go into a panic.
We are an explanatory culture good at describing our problems but not necessarily good at defining or resolving them. Currently, autism is on the front burner. It is a condition the medical profession is reporting with increasing frequency, especially with regard to its appearance in boys, but is this reporting reliable?
Parents trust the authority of medicine, and well that they should, when medicine is on solid ground. In the case of autism, however, it remains something of a medical mystery. The AMA has not been too candid about this fact. Pharmaceuticals are being used with autism as with Alzheimer’s, and we know how little is known about that disease.
What is known is that some children are late or circuitous bloomers. This is but one example.
DIRK DEVLIN, A STORY OF LATE OR AMBIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT
Buried in all these statistics and the anguish caused by them is a basic cultural phenomenon that has no limitations. It is the tendency to compare and compete, to view one child against another child as to how those respective children embrace and deal with life.
There is a real danger of self-fulfilling prophecy by designating and treating some children as fast and other children as slow learners. I am not at all certain these boys are slow. It reminds me of the case of Dirk Devlin.
* * *
Dirk was considered slow as a boy coming from a dysfunctional situation. Out of the trauma of his early existence, he turned out to be a loner, which he remained during his developmental years.
For the first five years of his life, he lived with foster parents or relatives but not with his birth parents. His father was wild and mainly unemployed, and his mother was in a sanitarium having suffered a mental breakdown after having three children in four years, and weighing only eighty pounds on a five-one frame.
Dirk lived with his great aunt and great uncle during part of this period, and found himself with many of his cousins, as several of the parents of these children were in various states of divorce, separation or family abandonment.
His great aunt owned and ran a tenement house with ample space for all these relatives, but not sufficient energy for the parenting. His great uncle ran a successful commercial roofing business.
The aunt had a special affection for Dirk as she had also reared his father, who was left parentless when his mother died in childbirth and his father took off never to be seen again. She could see Dirk was a child who preferred to be alone finding no reason to force him to play with the other children.
Not only was he a loner, but once he started to school he refused to talk. The nuns designated him as slow and put him in the slow section of the class. He found this strange as he identified with the more alert students, and loved listening to them recite in class. He loved school. He found it safe, secure, orderly, and controlled. It had structure something he had not experienced before.
Written work delighted him but he still refused to participate in class. Was this shyness? Could it be insecurity? Did he fear being embarrassed? That is what the nuns concluded, so they left him alone.
* * *
Years later, looking back, Dirk decided it wasn’t any of these things. He had a hunger to learn and felt no advantage when he was talking. Even in that tenement house he would watch the other children, study the way they behaved and marvel at some of the things they would do and say, but he had no desire to join them in the doing.
A big child for his age, he was always thought to be older than he was as he was taller and huskier than most others of his generation being six foot by the age of fourteen and still growing despite having a mother of five-one and a father of five-seven. When you are tall as a boy, people tend to think you are more mature than you are. He suffered for that perception, as he was quite immature.
Perhaps Dirk's greatest blessing was that his great aunt and mother never attempted to change him but accepted him as he was. The result was that he changed as his interior dial or center developed, which would become the key to his idiosyncrtic character.
* * *
Dirk never became competitive, never cared to be anyone else, never looked for a hero with whom to identify, and for this skewed orientation away from the norm he became an unusually strong personality, a conundrum and frustration to many.
The good nuns taught him he was not on earth to punish other with his talents or bother them with his problems, but to develop his talents and use them to the benefit of others. It was their job as educators to identify these talents, give them life and expression, and define their usefulness.
Nuns, he discovered, were not without venial subjectivity.
Dirk might receive the highest grade on a test, but was apt to hear, “Nice job, Seamus,“ as the nuns (and his mother) preferred his given name, "but what a surprise!" Even his most supportive nun, his eighth grade teacher, who applauded his skills as a basketball player and budding scholar of Catholic doctrine, drew the line when it came to special competitions.
The sixth, seventh and eighth grade students participated in a spelling bee elimination competition to see who would represent the school in the County Spelling Bee Contest. Dirk won the competition. Expected to win was John, a genuine prodigy, a gifted student, and a classical pianist of the first rank.
Dirk's teacher and the school principal took Dirk aside and sat him down and said, “You won the contest, Seamus, but we think we will have a better chance of winning the county contest if John represents the school.”
A puzzled expression crossed Dirk’s face as he attempted to process this information. “Stir, I don’t understand. I thought I won the contest?”
“Well, let us put it this way,” his teacher told him, “it seems all the easy words came your way, and all the hard words came to John.”
Anger welled up in him; anger was a dominant humor to his personality. He wanted to say, but Sister, I knew all the words, every one of them. He didn’t say anything out of respect for this special nun whom he loved.
He was discovering that he had a good memory; that he could see in his mind a page reference in a book, or find a quote without much trouble.
It was a gift his mother had, but a talent that had gotten him into trouble when he was at university. Professors thought he was cheating when clearly he was not. It wasn’t confined to printed words. He could remember lectures nearly verbatim, and what people had said months ago, but now denied. It amazed him how often people lied, how easily they would forget what they had said before, as if they had never said it.
* * *
Disconcerted by the nuns' put down, but also relieved, he now recalled what his mother had said: “You are high strung, Seamus. You don’t handle stress well. You must be better prepared than anyone else because if you’re not the floodgates will open and all hell will break lose reducing you to a blabbering idiot.”
This proved true years later in an organic chemistry test at university. Dirk went into the test with an “A” average, looked at the test, and panicked, getting a 52 percent on an “F.” He was shocked and dismayed but had the temerity to visit his professor. “I think I lost it,” he confessed.
“Yes, I think you did,” his professor agreed, taking out his grade book. “Your lowest grade before was a 92, and a 52 on this test. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re here to see what we can do about it, is that right?”
Dirk remained silent.
“Well, sir,” the professor continued, “I’ll put it this way. You no longer have an ‘A’ average, which is 90 percent, averaging this grade into your previous tests, but you’re close. That said if you average 90 percent or more on the rest of your tests this semester I’ll omit this grade from your average, fair enough?”
That surprising concession added motivation. The next test was quite different than any of the previous tests. There were only three problems, but the problems involved equations that took up more than a page each with the requirement of not only the correct sequence of reactions but also the suitable catalysts to produce the ultimate product in the end.
It was a conceptual framework rather than a regurgitation of formulae as had been the case before. A light went on in Dirk’s head from the beginning with him breezing through the test to finish before anyone else. He got a 100 percent with the next closest score 72 percent and the class average 39 percent.
He made an appointment to see the professor trying to understand the departure from the professor's previous format.
“I gave that type of test,” he conceded, “because I could see where you panicked. Then I wondered if my students were getting a grasp of organic chemistry as it applied to the real world of industry. Your performance on the previous test suggested I had my work cut out for me. How do you explain your turnaround?”
“I studied especially hard.”
“No, I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“There is a lot to remember in an organic chemistry course and both the professor and student have only limited time. Straight memory was difficult for me as a student. I think it is for you as well.” Dirk nodded but had no idea where this was going.
“That is because we have to see the relationship of the equations to the process. We find with straight memory it is difficult to recall the connection of isolated equations, am I right?” Dirk nodded again out of politeness, but not conviction. Sensing this, the professor added, “There is something I want you to take forward in your life.”
“What is that?”
“Conceptual thinking is the building blocks to understanding of anything, and fundamental to thinking in chemistry." He laughed. "A long time ago when I was a student a professor had this kind of discussion with me. It made sense to me then. I hope it makes sense to you now. It is probably why you have a good memory."
Surprise cross Dirk's face. "You showed off some on this test." This caused Dirk to squirm. "I'm speaking of the listing of alternative catalysts and their concomitant diversions from the desired product. That little conceit reflected your exhilaration, as if to say, 'I get it!' I smiled when I saw it."
The professor continued. "The test you failed didn't show this premise." He studied Dirk. "Why do you think that test threw you off? Do you know?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want to share that with me?”
“Not really. It’s so stupid. When I get upset my mind seems to leave me. If you want to know the truth, I was surprised with my 52 because I finished the test in a fog. I thought I had gotten a zero.”
* * *
Dirk thanked his professor and then went back to his dormitory room. He sat there and thought about what the professor had said. He wondered if it were true. Then he remembered something that had happened in high school.
In a class in advanced mathematics covering analytical and solid geometry and spherical trigonometry, his math teacher, whom he thought was the best teacher he ever had, gave the class a national test at midterm of the first semester of that year. His teacher had such a gift at explaining mathematical concepts that Dirk looked forward to each session.
When the results came back, the math teacher congratulated the students on how well they had done finding the majority in the class of only twelve students far exceeded the national average. Dirk, however, did poorly on the test, and was thoroughly flummoxed.
He went to see his math teacher who assured him that the test would not be averaged into his grade. “I wanted to see how we stacked up with advanced students across the country,” the math teacher said, “and I was generally pleased with the results.” This burned into Dirk’s psyche as if he were branded, which he thought he had been.
“What happened, Dirk?”
“The only thing I can say is that I was premed for the test but after I got to the third or fourth problem my mind went blank. I didn’t even finished.”
“I noticed that.” Dirk just sat there still as a mouse. “Don’t worry about it.”
As he left the room, he repeated to himself, don’t worry about it! Easy for him to say. He couldn't wait for football practice where he could hit somebody. He wondered, am I a learner or a knower, a pretender or for real? I thought I was learning mathematics. Was I kidding myself?
* * *
Towards the end of that year Dirk’s math class had another national test. Dirk finished in the 97 percentile, tied with the highest score in the class. He felt good about himself and shared it with his best friend who was also in the class.
His friend said, “You should have done well.”
“Why?”
“It was the same test we took last semester.”
“It was?”
“You didn’t recognize it?”
“No.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I mean it. I didn’t recognize the test.”
“Okay, okay.”
* * *
Dirk went back to his math teacher who was beaming as he approached. “How do you feel about yourself now?”
Incredulously, Dirk said, “Did you give us the same test again?”
“As a matter-of-fact, I did.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I did it because I wanted to see what you would do with a second chance.”
“You did it for me?”
“No, not only for you, but you have done the best of the lot. You set the curve, young man. What did you learn from this?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I've had you as a student for two years. I think it tells us something about you.”
“What is that?”
“You’re extremely intense, extremely serious. I’ve never once seen you relaxed or joking around in or out of class. I know you’re an athlete. I also know you hate that tag.”
“How do you know that?”
“Believe me it shows. You want others to respect you not only for playing with some kind of a ball but as a student, as a scholar.”
“That shows, too?”
“Oh, yes. You want to be taken seriously and have strong opinions. This can be frightening to some. They see your strenghts and not your weaknesses, making matters worse, they exaggerate your strengths.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, I imagine it’s a matter of power. You’re a tall good-looking boy, a good athlete, active in extra curricular activities, honor student, and seem to have everything. Others notice that. It can be quite intimidating creating envy, jealousy and even fear. When people fear you, watch out.”
“But why? I don't see myself that way.”
“Because they don’t see the weaknesses in you that I do, because they only see your strengths and your advantages.”
“Well, I don’t plan on changing.”
“That is obvious, but because of this and your intensity I’m afraid you’re going to walk into walls. Most of us compare and compete with others, and you simply won’t, worse yet, you won’t apologize for not. It makes you look arrogant as well as confident.”
“But I’m not that confident, and I don't see myself as arrogant.”
“Others would differ with you on that. They take a bead on others as to how they measure up, but you don't. You only compete with yourself. You demonstrated that last fall after doing poorly on the national test. You were the only one that came to me for an explanation, not in false humility, but to find out what was wrong and to correct it. Some others did poorly. Not one of them had the contretemps to come and discuss the problem with me, but you did. You are your own laboratory. That is unique.”
“But is it right?”
“It is not a question of being right or not, but it’s you.”
“What advice do you give me?”
“I’m not like you, Dirk, but I do admire your integrity. I will tell you this despite the difficulties I think you will encounter, go for it! We need more people like you and less people like the rest of us. You’re the genuine article. I suspect that will be your cross as well as your blessing.”
“Because I’m not going to change, is that it?”
Dirk’s math teacher didn’t answer. He put his papers in his briefcase signaling the session was over.
* * *
A person has the life that he has mainly because of his mentors along the way. These people introduce him to him or herself. They are especially effective when they don’t try to change the individual but attempt instead to identify the person to his or her uniqueness and then to harness it in some way.
There are also people in positions of authority because of their own failures or stymied careers that might attempt to suppress this uniqueness, and so the person must be always alert to such possibility. By a peculiar accident of being, we are likely to only appreciate our true gifts when pointed out to us by others. How sad it is when this never happens.
Remember this. If the central thrust of your life is feeding off the accomplishments of others, you will never be better than a poor imitation of them. Psychiatrists Willard and Marguerite Beecher state it this way in “Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity” (1966):
“Competition enslaves and degrades the mind. It is on of the most prevalent and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who is devoid of originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!” (p. 56)
On the other hand, if someone recognizes your uniqueness, or you help someone else recognize their uniqueness and you breathe life into that uniqueness, you will climb with them to unimagined heights. We are teachers as well as students, and always students in our quest for self-realization.
The air is not rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual at such a height separated from the squalor below. But rather, it is a vantage point to see more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something about it.
Whatever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you’re talking to me, please look me in the eye. Don’t mount a ladder and peer down on me as if I were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don’t wear your kudos or awards like medals on your person, but let me sense your essence from the insight I gain from my connection with you.
* * *
The greatest reward in life is to help others help themselves, to help them to realize and harness their unique gifts. It is the purpose of these missives on this website (www.fisherofideas.com) to encourage that process.
In no way is this an attempt to have others follow in my footsteps. That said the greatest opportunity to self-realization is to compare and compete only with oneself irrespective of anyone else. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty in this regard is temptation to measure oneself in terms of others and what others have accomplished. This is a predictor of remorse and self-defeat as the irony of life is you can never be better than a poor imitation of someone else no matter what you have achieved as measured by what they have realized.
Your lot in life is to find out what makes you tick, what gets you to rise off your bottom and to do something, to be someone, to have some purpose, to effectively utilize your inherent ability.
* * *
One reason we don’t know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic. What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of adults, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. Even a child can sense he or she is a burden. The most affluent society on earth has left its children largely in the lurch. Added to this complexity is that most parents have failed to cross that mantle into mature adulthood. My sense is that children, despite the statistics to the contrary, are not victims of raging autism but rather lifestyle diseases of their parents.
Given this predicament, many dysfunctional marriages have children to hold the marriage together, and implode the marriage instead. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease with such an intervention. In a compare and compete society, the most important job of breadwinners is believed to be that of making a good living with it assumed that nurturing of children is a given and will materialize as if by osmosis in the lap of affluence. Not so. When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to suffer, and it is usually time and attention to the needs of the children.
Adding to this turmoil is that of a marriage where one parent compares and competes with the other parent, finding ways to nullify his or her gain or advantage, even sabotaging the mate’s effort to the confusion of the children who are witness to the drama. The obstacles to self-realization are these and every reader knows someone engaged with them at the moment. I hope it is not the reader.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 16, 2009
REFERENCE:
My computer developed multiple viruses. For more than two weeks, I was unable to transcribe my thoughts generated during my daily walks. A strange thing happened. Nothing came to me as I walked. My computer is now healthy. Wondering has returned.
We use the word “virus” with our computer when it goes on the blink as if a computer is a living thing, while we use engineering terms to describe our mechanistic society. This unconscious process gives psychological identity to the inanimate, and then leads to our entrapment in its confinement. Notice how we talk about thinking outside the box, when it is the metaphore of the box that is the structure of our thought.
* * *
Those who read me know I process the past in terms of a personal narrative. In so doing, I leave out many things that don’t readily fit into the story telling. By focusing on ordinary events within the parameters of my experience, I note things we usually take for granted or leave out being overwhelmed by the problem solving.
Stories have a way of getting inside such obstacles to reveal truths buried in the perturbations. A wonderer exploits this advantage, leaving it up to the reader to assess its relevance or the quality of the wondering.
* * *
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
A person was telling me the other day about a set of boy twins, age four, who appeared much slower than a set of girl twins of the same age of another family. She picked to pieces the differences between the twins in quite knowing terms, implying something was wrong with the boys. But is there? How can we be sure?
Boys are typically slower than girls out of the starting blocks of life. Yet medical science on slim evidence has placed many parents near panic with the idea that autism is a pervasive condition.
Psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim some forty years ago got it all wrong when he headed the prestigious Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. He treated autism as a behavioral and psychological condition when understood today to be a brain disorder, a disorder nonetheless that is not clearly understood.
Autism has become the catchall phrase to mask developmental concerns. Neurological brain dysfunction is difficult to identify, yet often diagnosed by physicians and psychologists arbitrarily on behavioral evidence, alone. A series of qualifying autistic related indices are subjective at best and imprecise at worse, and can be misleading. It is therefore wise for parents to seek a second and third prognosis before they go into a panic.
We are an explanatory culture good at describing our problems but not necessarily good at defining or resolving them. Currently, autism is on the front burner. It is a condition the medical profession is reporting with increasing frequency, especially with regard to its appearance in boys, but is this reporting reliable?
Parents trust the authority of medicine, and well that they should, when medicine is on solid ground. In the case of autism, however, it remains something of a medical mystery. The AMA has not been too candid about this fact. Pharmaceuticals are being used with autism as with Alzheimer’s, and we know how little is known about that disease.
What is known is that some children are late or circuitous bloomers. This is but one example.
DIRK DEVLIN, A STORY OF LATE OR AMBIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT
Buried in all these statistics and the anguish caused by them is a basic cultural phenomenon that has no limitations. It is the tendency to compare and compete, to view one child against another child as to how those respective children embrace and deal with life.
There is a real danger of self-fulfilling prophecy by designating and treating some children as fast and other children as slow learners. I am not at all certain these boys are slow. It reminds me of the case of Dirk Devlin.
* * *
Dirk was considered slow as a boy coming from a dysfunctional situation. Out of the trauma of his early existence, he turned out to be a loner, which he remained during his developmental years.
For the first five years of his life, he lived with foster parents or relatives but not with his birth parents. His father was wild and mainly unemployed, and his mother was in a sanitarium having suffered a mental breakdown after having three children in four years, and weighing only eighty pounds on a five-one frame.
Dirk lived with his great aunt and great uncle during part of this period, and found himself with many of his cousins, as several of the parents of these children were in various states of divorce, separation or family abandonment.
His great aunt owned and ran a tenement house with ample space for all these relatives, but not sufficient energy for the parenting. His great uncle ran a successful commercial roofing business.
The aunt had a special affection for Dirk as she had also reared his father, who was left parentless when his mother died in childbirth and his father took off never to be seen again. She could see Dirk was a child who preferred to be alone finding no reason to force him to play with the other children.
Not only was he a loner, but once he started to school he refused to talk. The nuns designated him as slow and put him in the slow section of the class. He found this strange as he identified with the more alert students, and loved listening to them recite in class. He loved school. He found it safe, secure, orderly, and controlled. It had structure something he had not experienced before.
Written work delighted him but he still refused to participate in class. Was this shyness? Could it be insecurity? Did he fear being embarrassed? That is what the nuns concluded, so they left him alone.
* * *
Years later, looking back, Dirk decided it wasn’t any of these things. He had a hunger to learn and felt no advantage when he was talking. Even in that tenement house he would watch the other children, study the way they behaved and marvel at some of the things they would do and say, but he had no desire to join them in the doing.
A big child for his age, he was always thought to be older than he was as he was taller and huskier than most others of his generation being six foot by the age of fourteen and still growing despite having a mother of five-one and a father of five-seven. When you are tall as a boy, people tend to think you are more mature than you are. He suffered for that perception, as he was quite immature.
Perhaps Dirk's greatest blessing was that his great aunt and mother never attempted to change him but accepted him as he was. The result was that he changed as his interior dial or center developed, which would become the key to his idiosyncrtic character.
* * *
Dirk never became competitive, never cared to be anyone else, never looked for a hero with whom to identify, and for this skewed orientation away from the norm he became an unusually strong personality, a conundrum and frustration to many.
The good nuns taught him he was not on earth to punish other with his talents or bother them with his problems, but to develop his talents and use them to the benefit of others. It was their job as educators to identify these talents, give them life and expression, and define their usefulness.
Nuns, he discovered, were not without venial subjectivity.
Dirk might receive the highest grade on a test, but was apt to hear, “Nice job, Seamus,“ as the nuns (and his mother) preferred his given name, "but what a surprise!" Even his most supportive nun, his eighth grade teacher, who applauded his skills as a basketball player and budding scholar of Catholic doctrine, drew the line when it came to special competitions.
The sixth, seventh and eighth grade students participated in a spelling bee elimination competition to see who would represent the school in the County Spelling Bee Contest. Dirk won the competition. Expected to win was John, a genuine prodigy, a gifted student, and a classical pianist of the first rank.
Dirk's teacher and the school principal took Dirk aside and sat him down and said, “You won the contest, Seamus, but we think we will have a better chance of winning the county contest if John represents the school.”
A puzzled expression crossed Dirk’s face as he attempted to process this information. “Stir, I don’t understand. I thought I won the contest?”
“Well, let us put it this way,” his teacher told him, “it seems all the easy words came your way, and all the hard words came to John.”
Anger welled up in him; anger was a dominant humor to his personality. He wanted to say, but Sister, I knew all the words, every one of them. He didn’t say anything out of respect for this special nun whom he loved.
He was discovering that he had a good memory; that he could see in his mind a page reference in a book, or find a quote without much trouble.
It was a gift his mother had, but a talent that had gotten him into trouble when he was at university. Professors thought he was cheating when clearly he was not. It wasn’t confined to printed words. He could remember lectures nearly verbatim, and what people had said months ago, but now denied. It amazed him how often people lied, how easily they would forget what they had said before, as if they had never said it.
* * *
Disconcerted by the nuns' put down, but also relieved, he now recalled what his mother had said: “You are high strung, Seamus. You don’t handle stress well. You must be better prepared than anyone else because if you’re not the floodgates will open and all hell will break lose reducing you to a blabbering idiot.”
This proved true years later in an organic chemistry test at university. Dirk went into the test with an “A” average, looked at the test, and panicked, getting a 52 percent on an “F.” He was shocked and dismayed but had the temerity to visit his professor. “I think I lost it,” he confessed.
“Yes, I think you did,” his professor agreed, taking out his grade book. “Your lowest grade before was a 92, and a 52 on this test. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re here to see what we can do about it, is that right?”
Dirk remained silent.
“Well, sir,” the professor continued, “I’ll put it this way. You no longer have an ‘A’ average, which is 90 percent, averaging this grade into your previous tests, but you’re close. That said if you average 90 percent or more on the rest of your tests this semester I’ll omit this grade from your average, fair enough?”
That surprising concession added motivation. The next test was quite different than any of the previous tests. There were only three problems, but the problems involved equations that took up more than a page each with the requirement of not only the correct sequence of reactions but also the suitable catalysts to produce the ultimate product in the end.
It was a conceptual framework rather than a regurgitation of formulae as had been the case before. A light went on in Dirk’s head from the beginning with him breezing through the test to finish before anyone else. He got a 100 percent with the next closest score 72 percent and the class average 39 percent.
He made an appointment to see the professor trying to understand the departure from the professor's previous format.
“I gave that type of test,” he conceded, “because I could see where you panicked. Then I wondered if my students were getting a grasp of organic chemistry as it applied to the real world of industry. Your performance on the previous test suggested I had my work cut out for me. How do you explain your turnaround?”
“I studied especially hard.”
“No, I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“There is a lot to remember in an organic chemistry course and both the professor and student have only limited time. Straight memory was difficult for me as a student. I think it is for you as well.” Dirk nodded but had no idea where this was going.
“That is because we have to see the relationship of the equations to the process. We find with straight memory it is difficult to recall the connection of isolated equations, am I right?” Dirk nodded again out of politeness, but not conviction. Sensing this, the professor added, “There is something I want you to take forward in your life.”
“What is that?”
“Conceptual thinking is the building blocks to understanding of anything, and fundamental to thinking in chemistry." He laughed. "A long time ago when I was a student a professor had this kind of discussion with me. It made sense to me then. I hope it makes sense to you now. It is probably why you have a good memory."
Surprise cross Dirk's face. "You showed off some on this test." This caused Dirk to squirm. "I'm speaking of the listing of alternative catalysts and their concomitant diversions from the desired product. That little conceit reflected your exhilaration, as if to say, 'I get it!' I smiled when I saw it."
The professor continued. "The test you failed didn't show this premise." He studied Dirk. "Why do you think that test threw you off? Do you know?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want to share that with me?”
“Not really. It’s so stupid. When I get upset my mind seems to leave me. If you want to know the truth, I was surprised with my 52 because I finished the test in a fog. I thought I had gotten a zero.”
* * *
Dirk thanked his professor and then went back to his dormitory room. He sat there and thought about what the professor had said. He wondered if it were true. Then he remembered something that had happened in high school.
In a class in advanced mathematics covering analytical and solid geometry and spherical trigonometry, his math teacher, whom he thought was the best teacher he ever had, gave the class a national test at midterm of the first semester of that year. His teacher had such a gift at explaining mathematical concepts that Dirk looked forward to each session.
When the results came back, the math teacher congratulated the students on how well they had done finding the majority in the class of only twelve students far exceeded the national average. Dirk, however, did poorly on the test, and was thoroughly flummoxed.
He went to see his math teacher who assured him that the test would not be averaged into his grade. “I wanted to see how we stacked up with advanced students across the country,” the math teacher said, “and I was generally pleased with the results.” This burned into Dirk’s psyche as if he were branded, which he thought he had been.
“What happened, Dirk?”
“The only thing I can say is that I was premed for the test but after I got to the third or fourth problem my mind went blank. I didn’t even finished.”
“I noticed that.” Dirk just sat there still as a mouse. “Don’t worry about it.”
As he left the room, he repeated to himself, don’t worry about it! Easy for him to say. He couldn't wait for football practice where he could hit somebody. He wondered, am I a learner or a knower, a pretender or for real? I thought I was learning mathematics. Was I kidding myself?
* * *
Towards the end of that year Dirk’s math class had another national test. Dirk finished in the 97 percentile, tied with the highest score in the class. He felt good about himself and shared it with his best friend who was also in the class.
His friend said, “You should have done well.”
“Why?”
“It was the same test we took last semester.”
“It was?”
“You didn’t recognize it?”
“No.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I mean it. I didn’t recognize the test.”
“Okay, okay.”
* * *
Dirk went back to his math teacher who was beaming as he approached. “How do you feel about yourself now?”
Incredulously, Dirk said, “Did you give us the same test again?”
“As a matter-of-fact, I did.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I did it because I wanted to see what you would do with a second chance.”
“You did it for me?”
“No, not only for you, but you have done the best of the lot. You set the curve, young man. What did you learn from this?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I've had you as a student for two years. I think it tells us something about you.”
“What is that?”
“You’re extremely intense, extremely serious. I’ve never once seen you relaxed or joking around in or out of class. I know you’re an athlete. I also know you hate that tag.”
“How do you know that?”
“Believe me it shows. You want others to respect you not only for playing with some kind of a ball but as a student, as a scholar.”
“That shows, too?”
“Oh, yes. You want to be taken seriously and have strong opinions. This can be frightening to some. They see your strenghts and not your weaknesses, making matters worse, they exaggerate your strengths.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, I imagine it’s a matter of power. You’re a tall good-looking boy, a good athlete, active in extra curricular activities, honor student, and seem to have everything. Others notice that. It can be quite intimidating creating envy, jealousy and even fear. When people fear you, watch out.”
“But why? I don't see myself that way.”
“Because they don’t see the weaknesses in you that I do, because they only see your strengths and your advantages.”
“Well, I don’t plan on changing.”
“That is obvious, but because of this and your intensity I’m afraid you’re going to walk into walls. Most of us compare and compete with others, and you simply won’t, worse yet, you won’t apologize for not. It makes you look arrogant as well as confident.”
“But I’m not that confident, and I don't see myself as arrogant.”
“Others would differ with you on that. They take a bead on others as to how they measure up, but you don't. You only compete with yourself. You demonstrated that last fall after doing poorly on the national test. You were the only one that came to me for an explanation, not in false humility, but to find out what was wrong and to correct it. Some others did poorly. Not one of them had the contretemps to come and discuss the problem with me, but you did. You are your own laboratory. That is unique.”
“But is it right?”
“It is not a question of being right or not, but it’s you.”
“What advice do you give me?”
“I’m not like you, Dirk, but I do admire your integrity. I will tell you this despite the difficulties I think you will encounter, go for it! We need more people like you and less people like the rest of us. You’re the genuine article. I suspect that will be your cross as well as your blessing.”
“Because I’m not going to change, is that it?”
Dirk’s math teacher didn’t answer. He put his papers in his briefcase signaling the session was over.
* * *
A person has the life that he has mainly because of his mentors along the way. These people introduce him to him or herself. They are especially effective when they don’t try to change the individual but attempt instead to identify the person to his or her uniqueness and then to harness it in some way.
There are also people in positions of authority because of their own failures or stymied careers that might attempt to suppress this uniqueness, and so the person must be always alert to such possibility. By a peculiar accident of being, we are likely to only appreciate our true gifts when pointed out to us by others. How sad it is when this never happens.
Remember this. If the central thrust of your life is feeding off the accomplishments of others, you will never be better than a poor imitation of them. Psychiatrists Willard and Marguerite Beecher state it this way in “Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity” (1966):
“Competition enslaves and degrades the mind. It is on of the most prevalent and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who is devoid of originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!” (p. 56)
On the other hand, if someone recognizes your uniqueness, or you help someone else recognize their uniqueness and you breathe life into that uniqueness, you will climb with them to unimagined heights. We are teachers as well as students, and always students in our quest for self-realization.
The air is not rarefied at the top of the mountain nor is the individual at such a height separated from the squalor below. But rather, it is a vantage point to see more clearly what is wrong in the valley below with an urge to do something about it.
Whatever you are, whatever you have accomplished, if you’re talking to me, please look me in the eye. Don’t mount a ladder and peer down on me as if I were a malfunctioning machine that needed repair. Don’t wear your kudos or awards like medals on your person, but let me sense your essence from the insight I gain from my connection with you.
* * *
The greatest reward in life is to help others help themselves, to help them to realize and harness their unique gifts. It is the purpose of these missives on this website (www.fisherofideas.com) to encourage that process.
In no way is this an attempt to have others follow in my footsteps. That said the greatest opportunity to self-realization is to compare and compete only with oneself irrespective of anyone else. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty in this regard is temptation to measure oneself in terms of others and what others have accomplished. This is a predictor of remorse and self-defeat as the irony of life is you can never be better than a poor imitation of someone else no matter what you have achieved as measured by what they have realized.
Your lot in life is to find out what makes you tick, what gets you to rise off your bottom and to do something, to be someone, to have some purpose, to effectively utilize your inherent ability.
* * *
One reason we don’t know the outcome of children that are three, four and five-years-of-age today is not autism, per se, but rather the nurturing aspect of development is problematic. What has made this so is divorce, lifestyle excesses of adults, one parent or no parent families with children in foster homes or with grandparents or other relatives. Even a child can sense he or she is a burden. The most affluent society on earth has left its children largely in the lurch. Added to this complexity is that most parents have failed to cross that mantle into mature adulthood. My sense is that children, despite the statistics to the contrary, are not victims of raging autism but rather lifestyle diseases of their parents.
Given this predicament, many dysfunctional marriages have children to hold the marriage together, and implode the marriage instead. You cannot correct a lifestyle disease with such an intervention. In a compare and compete society, the most important job of breadwinners is believed to be that of making a good living with it assumed that nurturing of children is a given and will materialize as if by osmosis in the lap of affluence. Not so. When parents are on the ever-increasing spiral of economic progression, never satisfied with the status quo, acquiring more and more things, something has to suffer, and it is usually time and attention to the needs of the children.
Adding to this turmoil is that of a marriage where one parent compares and competes with the other parent, finding ways to nullify his or her gain or advantage, even sabotaging the mate’s effort to the confusion of the children who are witness to the drama. The obstacles to self-realization are these and every reader knows someone engaged with them at the moment. I hope it is not the reader.
* * *
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