"WHAT KILLED LOVE?" -- A RESPONSE AND EXCHANGE

WHAT KILLED LOVE – A RESPONSE AND EXCHANGE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 26, 2009 (Thanksgiving Day)

REFERENCE:

Published in three parts – because of its size – was this essay. It was only posted two days ago, and this is the holiday season, so it is not a surprise I have not heard from those who asked to have the three pieces sent to them. One person has responded with a comparison of my effort with a book titled “The Age of Empathy.” I was not familiar with the book and took it to mean this was, indeed, the age of empathy, which I feel is the converse of the case. This explains the exchange. What it doesn’t explain is my leveling with the reader with my motivation. It is in the spirit of candor that this is now posted.

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A READER WRITES:

We just got our Internet back up (our router had died) so I am still wading through a mass of emails. I read (scanned) "What killed love" and from what I read, it is not very different from the Age of Empathy. I will have to read your blog more carefully in order to really know. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.
Mary

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Mary,

Happy Thanks Giving to you, too. I'm not familiar with "Age of Empathy," but certainly wouldn't call this that age.

Jim

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THE READER RESPONDS TO DR. FISHER:

It is actually an analysis of greed vs. empathy and looks at past ages (and at monkeys since he is an ape specialist - and we are certainly ages). He points out some examples of the maternal drive to take care of infants but also the case of males killing babies. And, no, this is not an age of empathy. I think, in general, given the right circumstances, most humans are more greedy than empathetic. However, also given the right circumstances, a great number of us do show extreme empathy to victims of natural disasters (Katrina, etc) and dip into our pocketbooks to help others in need. A nice juxtaposition. Take care.
Mary

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DR. FISHER REPLIES TO THE READER’S EXPLANATION

Mary,

You are divine! I apologize. It so happened that I looked up what "The Age of Empathy" was about, and I totally agree with your assessment of the author's point of view vis-à-vis mine.

He apparently hits you with a feather and I hit you with a baseball bat. God only knows why I do it. God also probably knows as BB tells me, that I write out of anger, sadness and disappointment, and more for my own equilibrium than the readers. I think that is not quite true, but fair and close.

For example, I was first trained as a scientist and remember with regret how much we thought we were above the fray, that we were a kind of elite that understood what others didn't, and were therefore anointed to pass on our wisdom with sober condescension.

There were exceptions. Dr. James Van Allen (1914 - 2006) was in the physics department when I was at the University of Iowa. He was already famous for having discovered the Van Allen Radiation belt that surrounds our planet. Like many Iowans are inclined to be, he was down-to-earth and disenchanted with the East coast intelligentsia, and refused an opportunity to teach and do research once famous at MIT or Harvard or Cal Tech. He stayed at Iowa, and was modest to the end.

Another man was at Iowa when I was there. He was at Iowa's famous writer's worship that over the years has drawn the best authors of the land. He was a fellow Midwesterner -- Indiana -- and his name was Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I was enthralled with him and although I only audit some of his classes I felt a kinship with him. He once told his students to go out and interview people in their occupations and then write about it.

One student visited the Iowa City power plant with all its turbines and high-pressure boilers. He came away with a sense of the man that would resonate with that milieu. By chance while I was with Nalco Chemical Company, I became consultant to high power plants, and remembered that assessment, which was quite accurate.

Years later, when I came back from South Africa, where I was a corporate executive for Nalco, facilitating the formation of a new company, and had retired -- I was 35 -- after experiencing South African Apartheid, I ran into a professor who developed a theory of "ambient deficiency motivation."

Dr. Gunter's idea was that we are attracted to what we are not or think we should be. The sinner to the priesthood, the criminal to being a police officer, and so on. He never did much with that theory but it has resonated with me since and I wrote about it in my novel, "In the Shadow of the Courthouse" (2003).

Why am I going on? Good question.

I had an estate in South Africa -- imagine that a poor kid from Iowa -- and became well acquainted with my Bantu gardener, whom I write about in my novel still under construction, "Green Island in a Black Sea."

Josiah acquainted me with the religion of animism, while a professor neighbor aquatinted me with the sophisticated structure of the African native tribes. Imagine dealing with this in an essentially police state with a policy of separate development of the races, where roughly 4 million whites dictated the life of some 14 million natives, and you get an idea of the dilemma of a good Irish Catholic boy, his Church, his company, and, indeed, his American culture.

South Africa changed me, and I would imagine you could say I've been a different person ever since. Anger, I suppose, is a motivator, and now that I'm moving into my last years I'm trying to get out of my system what I see -- and what is there for everyone else but disinclined to see -- clumsy as my attempt might me.

Incidentally, you are the only one I have heard from thus far having sent this three-part "What Killed Love?" I sent it only to those who requested it, but I think I understand. My views on religion, science, society, philosophy and government don't follow party lines. I think love is the answer but modernity and post modernity have systematically and systemically destroyed its relevance as well as resilience. We are now in a loveless society bent on destroying our planet as we attempt to save it with technology.

When I say South Africa changed me, I don't want to give the impression that I was by-the-numbers a conventional conforming individual before. It was just that I felt I was living a lie, that corpocracy -- what I call the corporation -- exploited the exploitable wherever I worked, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and, yes, even Europe.

Mary, as a very poor boy as a child, I believed! My Irish Roman Catholic faith was an anchor; my country was an anchor. I believed businessmen were honest and honorable, on an on, the whole nine yards.

Idealism is not a happy place to be in a radically changing world. Social justice was important to me and I was a practitioner and benefactor of social exploitation. I would not have the comfortable life to write these words have I not so benefited.

I suppose every human being at some point in his life comes face-to-face with what he is and isn't. South Africa was mine. BB says I don't write to be published, and she may be right. I suppose I write so that a record of one individual's struggle with identity and authenticity can be recorded.

Thank you for listening,

Jim