WINNERS AND LOSERS AND HOW EASILY THEY REVEAL THEMSELVES
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 30, 2009
* * *
Everyone is a winner but also a loser. Winning and losing are inextricably connected. That is the nature of life. Winning becomes a problem when we need to win at any cost. Losing becomes a problem when we are so fixated with losing we cannot get beyond it. This is written to provide some insight from someone who has had his share of wins and losses, and is still standing.
* * *
In 1974, five years after I retired the first time, and four years after my first book CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1970) was published, I got a call from Cincinnati, Ohio from a division of Bristol Myers, Inc., the Dracket Company, makers of “Drano.” The executive vice president of Bristol Myers had read my "Confident Selling" and wanted to interview me for the position of vice president and national sales manager of the Dracket division.
This presented a peculiar set of circumstances:
(1) I wasn’t looking for a job, but was pursuing a Ph.D. in organizational-industrial psychology;
(2) I was using my G.I. Bill, which was quite generous for a full-time student and father of four. This was supplemented by doing seminars for the Professional Institute of the American Management Association across the country;
(3) I had not yet gotten the bad taste out of my mouth for corpocracy;
(4) I was teaching a course at St. Petersburg Junior College (now four-year St. Petersburg College) based on “Confident Selling”; and
(5) Although encountering failure after failure to get published after successfully launching my writing career with “Confident Selling,” I had run into a wall but still persisted in becoming an author.
An exchange of letters accompanied with incentives found me traveling to Cincinnati to interview for the job. The vice president of Bristol Myers from New York City treated me as if I was already hired. I left the company after three days of interviews with the job in hand.
The next four weeks, a man flew down from Cincinnati every week, and briefed me on company business to give me a running start when I got my affairs in order, acquired transcripts of my academic work to transfer to Xavier University, sold my house, found schools for my children, and other details.
Then the unexpected changed everything: OPEC in 1974 placed an embargo on oil, which essentially dried up American automobiles at the gas station pump. Dracket made its products from petrochemicals. Petrochemicals came from crude oil. Dracket, in a panic, placed an immediate freeze on all hiring. So, I was hired and fired before I assumed my new job.
* * *
That may seem traumatic but it wasn’t. It was comedic and made me, once again, aware of how fickle corpocracy is, and how quick to panic.
Still, I didn’t come away from the experience empty handed. The Bristol Myers vice president was a minority owner of the Cincinnati Bengals, and a personal friend of Paul Brown, the owner, general manager, and coach of the Bengals, and former legendary coach of the Cleveland Browns when the legendary Jim Brown played for him.
It was the fall of the year and the NFL was ending preseason play. “The other day I attended a Bengals practice,” the vice president told me, “and I noticed that some of the guys were working their butts off while others were jawboning and jiving. So, I asked my friend looking at these men, coach, how do you decide who will make the team and who won’t? The coach looked at me and said, ‘I don’t decide. They do.’
“Now, if you know the coach you know he often talks in riddles and this was yet another. I told him that didn’t make sense. ‘But it makes perfect sense,’ he answered. ‘Look at those guys over there.’ They were the ones doing nothing. ‘They've already decided they’re not going to make the team. When I tell them, it will only be anticlimactic, simple as that.’ I understood then what he meant.”
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A COACH TO PICK OUT WINNERS AND LOSERS
Anthropologists define winning and losing, sociologists chart these attributions, while coaches deal with the fact with grown men, men who are not likely to have matured beyond adolescence. Losers project how the die will be cast by dogging it, while winners are working their tails off. Most of us fall somewhere between these perimeters as winners hang out with winners and losers with losers. To wit:
(1) Young people of high moral character hang out with other young people of similar character.
(2) Bright students are attracted to other bright students.
(3) Motivated workers are a magnet to other motivated workers.
(4) Students who are aggressive, extroverts, adventuresome and defy the status quo find each other with little trouble.
* * *
Some years ago when I was counseling a young man who had spent time in Raiford, a maximum security prison in Florida, I asked him, a nice man in many respects, why he got into such serious trouble? He answered, “Trouble followed the people I hung out with.” But why those people? He replied, “They were the only ones who would accept me.” Billy, practically illiterate with little formal education, abandoned by his prostitute mother, and beaten often by her drunken lovers, discovered he had much in common with other damaged young men, and got caught up in petty crime that gravitated to felonies.
* * *
5) The bully is attracted to other weak-minded individuals. Bullies hide their cowardice in the patina of false courage. Bullies can smell fear and are quick to exploit it.
(6) Poor students hang together and make fun of excellent students who also hang together.
* * *
Where it gets more complicated is when physical attractiveness and popularity is the primary gauge of acceptance.
As fading as physical beauty, our culture is obsessed with it. We don't want to grow old so we never plan on growing up. We have made the cosmetic and plastic surgery industry a multi-billion dollar business. It then follows that sincerity between beautiful people is often like watching a pretend drama on screen, especially when conversation seldom rises above banal nonsense. This was once limited to Hollywood; now it is a problem of everyone of every age.
An index of this cultural proclivity is the prominence of cheap gossip, celebrity worship and bizarre self-disclosure, once limited to television, radio and gossip columns, now a staple of the Internet on FaceBook.
* * *
When nothing is personal or sacred to the individual, then winning and losing is a moot point because there is no “is” there. And when there is no “is,” then a society of gangs fills the vacuum, which is the case today.
Everyone belongs to some kind of a gang.
Check out anyone’s association, and you will see they qualify as gang status. Gangs are loose federations of individuals that provide identity with dress, manner, rites and rituals, as well as language, interests and values, less we forget, equal contempt for nonmembers.
Gangs strut their stuff as if the world is envious of them when they are prisoners of compare and compete.
Gangs think it is “cool” to paint their bodies with tattoos because it gives them gang status and identity.
Gangs think one political party is superior to another when they are both vying for the same thing and in the same way. All politicians are professional seducers. They woo people for a living. If they are clever, and good at what they do, they'll strike a popular chord, and will prosper. So, when you hear advocates of one political party or another, you don't hear the speaker's voice but that of the politician. Professional seducers trade on mass appeal, count on it.
Name any subject of value and you will reveal a multitude of gangs. Notice I have not called such status “tribes.” We once were tribes but the lines between tribes have been obliterated so that no tribes exist except in gang status. Notice also that I haven't limited gangs to the nefarious counterculture ethnic gangs that plague our cities. Gangs exploit what is precious to the wider culture, but in a less systemic or critical way than politicians.
* * *
We are now in an economic downturn, and have been sold on the idea that the problem is one of money. We have been programmed to associate money and jobs as interchangeable, when they are not.
We all need money to live on, but we need a job to have a sense of purpose, and somewhere to go and something to do. A job gives meaning to life.
We are not programmed to vegetate at any age. That is a myth that has kept medical doctors, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies in business. Raised to prominence are gurus with their simple-minded theories of health, wealth and purpose. Meanwhile, as relief from this fact, we have the gossip and sexual innuendo industry of matrons, madams and gents promoting exhibitionism on television as if society has become a merry madhouse.
The purpose of life is what we do. We have all been put on earth to do something. Choosing not to find out what that is fuels anxiety, angst and aggravation. In A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007), I indicate on how we have stayed the same, missed the changes and left the future up for grabs.
* * *
Economic Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman is even more blunt. He calls the decade we are leaving the “big zero decade” with zero job creation over the decade, zero gains in homeownership (25% of all mortgages in America and 45% of mortgages here in Florida find homeowners owing more than their houses are worth), zero gains for stocks even without taking inflation into account, while the celebrated dot-com bubble has deflated.
Krugman adds, “What was truly impressive about the decade past, however, was our unwillingness, as a nation, to learn from our mistakes.” Economics are always in a state of instability but the same people are the victims of this instability because they are in a state of perpetual denial and choose to never see beyond their noses.
* * *
Last night I was shopping late with BB in a department store in a large mall. One sales lady was complaining to a colleague about how tired she was, how long she had been working that day. The other young lady, who had been working equally long, but was listening patiently, said finally, almost voce sotto, “I feel lucky to have a job.” If you’re interested in stereotypes, the complainer was white; the accepting young lady was black.
* * *
Losers are the last to come into work and the first to leave.
Losers do exactly as they are told and no more, and often less.
Losers are quick to say, “that’s not my job” when someone needs help and is too busy to complete a task.
Losers are always waiting for the big break, the big score, the right connection, the right patsy to snow and exploit, or to make the well-heeled feel obligated to bail them out when they get in over their head.
Losers are knowers and never learners. They are too smart to take an entrance level job, or go back to school because they don’t want to sacrifice the time or make the commitment for fear of failure, plus there are no guarantees that the effort will be worth the cost. Besides, they might have to give up their beer, time with their friends, who also are knowers and would never think of going back to school and breaking their routine.
Losers want “theirs” but the last thing they are willing to do is to work for it.
* * *
When I was in my late thirties, I went back to school sitting in classes with students ten to fifteen years younger, and they would say, “Aren’t you a little old to be here?” When I got my Ph.D., one of my classmates, much older than I was, in his late sixties, was asked, “Now that you’ve spent all this time going through this ridiculous process, what are you going to do with your Ph.D.?” He smiled, and said simply, “Enjoy it.”
Over my long life, I have encountered far more losers than winners because winners have 80 percent of the power and money, and are only 20 percent of the people.
Winners also own 80 percent of the real estate and investment capital, enjoy 80 percent of the leisure, and live longer and more productive lives than losers.
If you think this is a phenomenon of capitalism, you would be wrong. This has been true in feudalism, communism, socialism and combinations of these isms. Opportunity to break this Pareto differentiation is possible in the United States, but less so in Western Europe, yet the differentiation holds firm.
Why? Because we are programmed from birth and inculcated with a culture, value system, education and mindset of exceptionalism. We are drugged with social, economic and cultural nets to break our fall and prevent us from failing and therefore from succeeding to a large extent.
* * *
Winners are not smarter, more gifted, or talented, or in any way superior to losers, except in one dimension: they are willing to take risks and endure the pain of failure, embarrassment and losing everything in order to grow and keep growing. We treat them as exceptional when they only stay with a problem longer.
Winners do not take risks with reckless abandon but with simple, persistent and determined effort with benchmarks along the way focused on the process not the outcome.
Winners get there because the pleasure is in the risk taking, and the delight in the process of failing and then succeeding in a continuous journey of highs and lows with progress measured in inches and not miles.
Winners are not focused on retirement, on wealth creation, per se, or on accolades and celebrity, but on the excitement of being alive in the spirit of work, enjoying the moment with every day an opportunity and challenge to encounter the unexpected. Certainty is not in winners’ vocabulary because they know certainty is a myth that losers embrace at the expense of gainful experience.
Losers are looking for guarantees, for the certainty that the company, the country, the government will bail them out of their excesses, or take the blame when their failure to be winners sinks the company, country, the industry and themselves into the tank.
* * *
No worker, whatever the profession or job, should expect more than a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Beyond that it is nigh impossible of the 20 percent winners to carry the 80 percent losers for the long haul, as recent events have proven.
Are the fat cats on Wall Street winners because they get multimillion-dollar bonuses?
Hardly. They are one-dimensional personalities that believe money spells the difference between winning and losing in life. Beyond basic necessities for health and comfort, wealth is relatively irrelevant.
Two-thirds of the world is impoverished with the simple conveniences of a roof over people’s heads, food on the table, adequate schooling for the children, medical facilities for the sick, and proper drinking water and sanitation for all as if this described Paradise.
In my long life, I have seen people become spectacularly wealthy overnight, think like they were part of the elite, behave like they were living in a film, and then see the wealth disappear, along with their fair weather friends, and then blame each other for the crash. They were into fast cars, upscale dwellings, boats and all the other accouterments that define the wealthy from the rest of us, and yet in the end, they acted as losers.
* * *
An entire fantasy industry has played with the mind of instant millionaires, and that is the industry of self-help books, self-esteem psychologists, and men of the cloth promoting purposefulness.
We are in the age of canned goods and microwave dinners, which this fantasy industry has now borrowed with spectacular success. Self-help books are nothing more than canned goods, while self-esteem psychology relies on microwave theories to provide quick fixes. Add to the spiritual recipes of purposefulness and you have a description of the moral dilemma of our times: shortcutitis!
* * *
When I was a Honeywell psychologist, people would come to me and say they suffered from a low sense of self-esteem or self-worth. Bluntly, I would say, “What do you expect me to do about it?” They would look at me aghast. “Isn’t that your job?” I would smile, and say, “No, it is yours. And guess what? Do something worthwhile and you will discover self-esteem.” I would then turn my attention to that challenge.
PBS has a popular psychological evangelist who promotes self-esteem dribble, and people buy it because they want easy answers to difficult questions. They want to join the winners who represent only 20 percent of the people by taking short cuts, by attending seminars, reading self-motivational books, complaining constantly that they are surrounded by negativism, while never thinking of getting off their asses and doing something, including leaving and doing something else if the climate is too confining. They want inspiration without perspiration, which is like wanting to breathe without oxygen. They want instant relief from what is crashing down on them without doing anything other than complaining, acquiring a personal trainer, or something cosmetic like attending a seminar or reading a book to correct the problem. Ironically, corpocracy acts in the same way as the individual with the same dispirited outcomes.
* * *
Winners don’t dwell on being positive or negative. They don’t have that luxury, as they are too busy focused on the process of doing. They are not waiting for inspiration but exerting perspiration. They work long hours and don’t complain. They have no time for bromides or cliché but are in the business of giving their all and not worrying about what they will get for the giving.
Winners can be polite or brash, but in either case it is a matter of patience with them, as they hate to spend much time jawboning about things that move nothing in any direction other than forward inertia.
* * *
We have expensive clinics for drug addicts, alcoholics and the obese. People pay as much as $10,000 a week for some of these digs, when the cure for such addictions would be much more effective, much more permanent and much more meaningful were the suffering addicts to disassociate themselves with others with the problem behavior.
Addicts, whatever the addiction, are attracted to other addicts. To break connection with this downward spiral requires painful and complete separation. To do otherwise means the cure, as expensive as it might be, will not take for long.
THEN THERE ARE LONERS
Over the course of my life, living in many parts of the globe, experiencing various cultures and people, studying in various institutions, and reading thousands of autobiographies and biographies, I have been amazed at the disproportionate number of high achievers who described themselves as loners.
Most high achieving writers admit to being loners straightaway. You would think it fits them given that writing is a singular activity between the writer, his material and his mind’s ability to organize data into some semblance of thought or stories of interest.
But then I found this is not always the case. Popular novelists can be quite gregarious. This is especially true since the publishing industry sells authors the way the food industry sells cereal. Books are packaged, programmed, promoted and sold identical to Quaker Oats. It is no accident books appear on supermarket shelves the same as cereals where books outsell conventional bookstores. Popular novels have become a staple at Super Wal-Marts for example.
And like cereal, the popular novelist is likely to create the raw material of an outline of a story while a grunt does the dirty work of turning it into a book, sharing royalties and book credit, but leaving no doubt that the marquee of the product is that of the celebrated celebrity novelist. His name sells the book just like Quaker Oats sells a proprietary product.
Even dead authors are reaping the benefits of this new industry such as the late Robert Ludlum. Yet it fails to alarm the reader that the author’s latest novel differs little with his previous twenty or thirty because it follows a formula that the living grunt writer honors with great integrity. How do they get away with this? Ask a reader to describe the book just read two days after the fact, and you will find the reader has already forgotten the storyline. The industry is counting on this.
* * *
Formula thinking and writing offend the loner because the loner writes about the timeless. J. D. Salinger wrote a book about a young man’s angst and boredom written more than fifty years ago that is still a perennial seller, but he no longer publishes, and lives as a hermit. He has no desire to compete with potboilers.
Loners take the risks and endure the pain of embracing if precariously universal themes. Philip Roth is another American author who continues to write and live in the bosom of society that will also be read far after his earthly days, but alas, I think more enduring fiction will survive written by women. Herta Muller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009 and Doris Lessing in 2007 both incidentally are European women.
Too many fiction authors, male and female, write the way the fat cats of Wall Street leverage residuals, measuring their literary significance by how many books they sell and royalty income they receive. Few if any of these mega-authors will be in print in 100 years.
* * *
It has been my privilege to know and study under several loners in the scientific and engineering community from high school on, and to marvel at their expertise and humility, far from the maddening crowd.
Such people provided tools to the Steven Jobs and Bill Gates of this world. These loners quietly applied their trade as these students soared to billionaire status. So, it has been over the past 500 years: the loners create and the entrepreneurs exploit. The hard work and heavy lifting, the grueling science of inquiry, wondering, pondering, failing and succeeding in a quest to understand Nature’s mysteries has been the isolated lot of loners, and the supple material of technologists. Loners are not complaining as they are in to process not product.
* * *
It is when this grueling work is done for glory that losers are treated as winners. This was the case when Rosalind Franklin discovered the stucture of DNA studying coal. She took the famous “Photograph 51,” which revealed the B form of DNA. James Watson literally stole this research as he now could see the DNA molecule was a “double helix.”
Franklin, after spending thousands of hours x-raying coal, suffered severe radiation damage to her system and died in her mid-thirties before James Watson, Francis Crick, and her boss, Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize for her work. If this were not enough, posthumously, she was called the “Dark Lady” in Watson’s book, “The Double Helix” (1968) with no mention that she had died. Only the living are awarded the Nobel Prize.
Sobriquets that diminish a person have always offended me. I feel the same way about people called “nerds” or some other deprecating term to make them seem more odd and out of the mainstream, especially when they stir the mainstream’s drink.
* * *
The absurdity of the times finds the identity of people once on the fringe, such as people plastered with tattoos, now mainstream. People today would rather appear to look rebellious than to rebel, to seem unconventional when conforming to uncertain identity, to parade about with body paint symbols of values as if human billboards while professing no particular faith in anything.
Another absurdity, as we become increasingly amalgamated into a homogenous society the more we retreat into polarized monolithic biases, of either/or as if all goodness or badness was proprietary to one group or another, when that could never be the case in the best of circumstances.
* * *
In a celebrity culture, which we have at the moment, winners and losers are irrelevant as society’s awareness of itself is skin deep. The bottom feeders better known as “Main Street” have spent the past score of years living and behaving as if they were “Wall Street.” But now that mass excess has hit overload, they want to distant themselves from societal greed, fraud, corruption, and failure, as if they were not complicit in its creation.
* * *
In the beginning of the twenty-first century, money was loose in the United States, but from another angle it was tight. The end of the Cold War made money tight at the top. This was a result of a reduction in defense spending, heavy manufacturing shifting abroad, collapse of the automotive industry, and a general belt-tightening of the national economy as it made adjustments to a peace economy. The men at the top looked gloomily at this situation and contrived a counterattack. Money already loose to bottom feeders was made even looser to them so as to restore looseness at the top.
Credit became the new guise for men at the top to regain the advantage. Good credit, bad credit, or no credit, it didn’t matter, anyone could purchase anything from household staples to homes to automobiles to boats and other big-ticket items as the purse strings were loosened to the point of being nonexistent. Cash flowed back to the men at the top to eclipse the cold war economy.
Clever people devised ways to make the poor, the disadvantaged, the indulgent, and the derelict carry the red ink for them as they painted their world green with capital. With the Twin Tower terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the decade of greed followed fueled by fear and paranoia. It loosened money even more for men at the top with the willing participation of bottom feeders in the charade.
When the collapse came, it was a complicit fall, which media and everyone else has chosen to ignore. It is the fault line in capitalism, and it has been so since the early eighteenth century.
* * *
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
RICHARD STARK NOVELS -- A REVIEW
RICHARD STARK NOVELS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 28, 2009
* * *
Call me an intellectual snob, but I wasn’t aware of the Richard Stark novels until I saw an advertisement for them from the University of Chicago Press in The New York Review of Books, a journal of essays on books to which I have subscribed to for many years.
A writer myself, over the years since a boy, I have gone through the American and European classic novels, and then increasingly on to novels of the more superfluous and contemporary class of what I call escape reading, which includes a good number of mystery novels. Joyce Carol Oates is right. Once you read a typical mystery novel, a few days later you can’t remember the story much less the plot line.
In my undergraduate years at the University of Iowa, I was a chemistry major but was opened to a whole new world when taking two required core courses for a degree. They were “Modern Literature” and “Greeks and the Bible.”
Being an Irish Roman Catholic boy, I was familiar with the writings of St. Paul through the gospels, but I had never read the Bible, or, indeed, the Greek classics. The epistles of the gospels provided moral lessons, which the texts of the Letters of St. Paul provided grounding. I found Protestants were much more familiar with the Bible than I was, and so this was a further revelation of my ignorance, while my Jewish friends in college could quote the Old Testament as if it were a family heirloom, which it was to them.
Before such exposure, I felt all the answers were in science and mathematics and I didn’t have to bother my mind about literature, sentence structure, or any of those light weight subjects that went nowhere and ordinary people filled their minds with.
Because of exposure to these two core courses, I was moved to squirrel in electives far from my major in such courses as “Shakespeare,” “The American Novel,” and “Understanding Fiction and Poetry.”
Once I graduated, and now was a chemist in research & development, I returned to only reading science, that is, until I took a job as a chemical sales engineer in the chemical industry to make more money to support my family. It was then that I discovered the importance of those two core courses and the subsequent electives. They became the foundation to my understanding of people and how to deal with them. No surprise, I imagine, my first book was CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970).
* * *
Fast forward to the time of my first retirement in my mid-thirties, now with a passion to be a writer, yes, of novels and short stories, finding instead that I lacked the tools, the cadence, the sense and the connection such writers have with their readers. Curiously, now forty years later, I have written seven other nonfiction books, and only one novel, which was a memoir of my youth (IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE Authorhouse 2003). I am working on a novel of South Africa where I lived during the time of apartheid. I mention this because I find writing good fiction very hard work. So, I have great respect for those that do it well.
It was then that I timidly started to read such writers as Ross McDonald, to reread Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and others. I had worked around the world and had seen pathos first hand, finding that these writers, and others like them, looked into the heart of man with the ability to express what they saw honestly and convincingly. Increasingly, I found myself reading mystery novels, and there I discovered some of the best writing I had experienced, a genre I had always considered inferior to mainstream fiction.
* * *
It was how I came to read Richard Stark’s “The Hunter,” with one of the pen names of the prolific crime fiction writer, Donald Westlake. I have since read “The Man With the Getaway Face” and “The Outfit.” I am reading them in order as they were published, and plan to read all twenty-four of his novels under that pen name. I’ll tell you why.
Stark writes like a movie in your head. You forget that you are reading a book and hear the characters talking, are surprised and shocked by their actions, and wonder why you are not appalled by antics of the main character, “Parker.” He is paradoxically moral in an amoral way, visceral without the claptrap of stereotype, and has a code of conduct that is outside the law but works for him because he never abandons it. Secular and sacred society is irrelevant to him because he has no appetite for the ambivalence of truth or the ambiguity of justice.
Parker, however, is not a one-dimensional “American Adam” as depicted by actor John Wayne and described by Garry Wills as “the archetypal American displaced person who has arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killer for cleaning the world of things that need killing, loving but not bound down by love, rootless but carrying the center in himself, a gyroscope direction-setter, a traveling norm.”
Parker, alas, would find this pathetically romantic. He has no redeeming features to think of, although he resembles the American Adam but in three-dimensions. He is surviving in a jungle in which the world has become using his wits, which are considerable, to get in and out of danger to embrace the next episode he knows inevitably confronts him. He lives in a godless world where homicide is only an option of the last resort and the killing must be consistent with his godless code. He is a survivor in which the world has gone dead to meaning, where the moment only resonates with the prehensile mind.
Read “The Hunter” and you are introduced to a man who understands why his wife tried and thought she killed him, and why he had to kill his wife, and then why he had no other option than to look for and kill the man who made that her only option.
In “The Man With the Getaway Face,” the economy of style has the bite of a language of clarity and power, and of imagery that compares favorably with Graham Greene’s “This Gun for Hire.” Parker has killed the man who orchestrated his murder using his wife as his instrument. He then feels obliged to kill the man’s boss in “The Outfit,” which is akin to the Mafia. This set of actions has him on the run seeking anonymity in plastic surgeon. But with everything Parker does, it comes up with double crosses that he has to finesse only to again become finessed by them.
In “The Outfit,” his cover blown, and his new face now the object of the Outfit to permanently erase, Parker doesn’t run from contract killers but embraces the challenge against a stacked deck. He is a thinking man without portfolio, a man of the street, hard as nails, as resolute to exterminate his enemies as they are resolved to do him in. So, he hijacks their hijacked trucks, kills their hired guns, and disrupts their businesses, knowing all the time that this war has no end but simply new beginnings.
Crime novelist Elmore Leonard, an artist of the genre in his own right, celebrates the power and economy of Stark’s style. Leonard once advised never to start a novel with the weather. Stark goes one better: he sets the tone of the whole novel in the first sentence. In the three books I’ve read to date, here are the first sentences:
(1) “The Hunter”: “When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, Parker told him to go to hell.”
(2) “The Man With the Getaway Face”: “When the bandages came off, Parker looked in the mirror at a stranger.”
(3) “The Outfit”: “When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed.”
You get a sense in the first novel of an angry guy, in the second surprised at the disconnect between the image in the mirror and himself, and in the third something abrupt and devastating has entered the sanctuary of his uneasy peace.
These are dark or noir novels of the underbelly of society where people live in what William Faulkner called “quiet desperation.” The twenty-four novels were published from 1962 to 2008, the year of the death of their creator, Donald Westlake. You only have to listen to the nightly television news of your city to know that Parker lives, breathes, and is plotting his revenge around the corner from where you live. This gives a sense of urgency, timeliness, and trepidation against the softness and denial in which most of us encounter our daily world, choosing not to see or experience the ugliness that poisons the air we breathe.
These are not detective novels, not police journals, not law and order court dramas, but gnarled, sinewy, scarred, knotted and gripping stories of life that feeds off society but pays it no mind. The women are as hard and as cunning as the men, while love is a word that has never entered either gender’s vocabulary. Why read these novels?
If you are an inveterate reader, read these novels for the prose, style and clarity of the writing. If you are a writer, read them to experience the humbling sense of being in the presence of a master of language and ambience. If you are a student of human behavior, read them to get a sense of the ugliness that hides in us all under the patina of beauty. If you are a philosopher, and who isn’t, read them to get a sense of why the world periodically goes haywire.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 28, 2009
* * *
Call me an intellectual snob, but I wasn’t aware of the Richard Stark novels until I saw an advertisement for them from the University of Chicago Press in The New York Review of Books, a journal of essays on books to which I have subscribed to for many years.
A writer myself, over the years since a boy, I have gone through the American and European classic novels, and then increasingly on to novels of the more superfluous and contemporary class of what I call escape reading, which includes a good number of mystery novels. Joyce Carol Oates is right. Once you read a typical mystery novel, a few days later you can’t remember the story much less the plot line.
In my undergraduate years at the University of Iowa, I was a chemistry major but was opened to a whole new world when taking two required core courses for a degree. They were “Modern Literature” and “Greeks and the Bible.”
Being an Irish Roman Catholic boy, I was familiar with the writings of St. Paul through the gospels, but I had never read the Bible, or, indeed, the Greek classics. The epistles of the gospels provided moral lessons, which the texts of the Letters of St. Paul provided grounding. I found Protestants were much more familiar with the Bible than I was, and so this was a further revelation of my ignorance, while my Jewish friends in college could quote the Old Testament as if it were a family heirloom, which it was to them.
Before such exposure, I felt all the answers were in science and mathematics and I didn’t have to bother my mind about literature, sentence structure, or any of those light weight subjects that went nowhere and ordinary people filled their minds with.
Because of exposure to these two core courses, I was moved to squirrel in electives far from my major in such courses as “Shakespeare,” “The American Novel,” and “Understanding Fiction and Poetry.”
Once I graduated, and now was a chemist in research & development, I returned to only reading science, that is, until I took a job as a chemical sales engineer in the chemical industry to make more money to support my family. It was then that I discovered the importance of those two core courses and the subsequent electives. They became the foundation to my understanding of people and how to deal with them. No surprise, I imagine, my first book was CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970).
* * *
Fast forward to the time of my first retirement in my mid-thirties, now with a passion to be a writer, yes, of novels and short stories, finding instead that I lacked the tools, the cadence, the sense and the connection such writers have with their readers. Curiously, now forty years later, I have written seven other nonfiction books, and only one novel, which was a memoir of my youth (IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE Authorhouse 2003). I am working on a novel of South Africa where I lived during the time of apartheid. I mention this because I find writing good fiction very hard work. So, I have great respect for those that do it well.
It was then that I timidly started to read such writers as Ross McDonald, to reread Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and others. I had worked around the world and had seen pathos first hand, finding that these writers, and others like them, looked into the heart of man with the ability to express what they saw honestly and convincingly. Increasingly, I found myself reading mystery novels, and there I discovered some of the best writing I had experienced, a genre I had always considered inferior to mainstream fiction.
* * *
It was how I came to read Richard Stark’s “The Hunter,” with one of the pen names of the prolific crime fiction writer, Donald Westlake. I have since read “The Man With the Getaway Face” and “The Outfit.” I am reading them in order as they were published, and plan to read all twenty-four of his novels under that pen name. I’ll tell you why.
Stark writes like a movie in your head. You forget that you are reading a book and hear the characters talking, are surprised and shocked by their actions, and wonder why you are not appalled by antics of the main character, “Parker.” He is paradoxically moral in an amoral way, visceral without the claptrap of stereotype, and has a code of conduct that is outside the law but works for him because he never abandons it. Secular and sacred society is irrelevant to him because he has no appetite for the ambivalence of truth or the ambiguity of justice.
Parker, however, is not a one-dimensional “American Adam” as depicted by actor John Wayne and described by Garry Wills as “the archetypal American displaced person who has arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killer for cleaning the world of things that need killing, loving but not bound down by love, rootless but carrying the center in himself, a gyroscope direction-setter, a traveling norm.”
Parker, alas, would find this pathetically romantic. He has no redeeming features to think of, although he resembles the American Adam but in three-dimensions. He is surviving in a jungle in which the world has become using his wits, which are considerable, to get in and out of danger to embrace the next episode he knows inevitably confronts him. He lives in a godless world where homicide is only an option of the last resort and the killing must be consistent with his godless code. He is a survivor in which the world has gone dead to meaning, where the moment only resonates with the prehensile mind.
Read “The Hunter” and you are introduced to a man who understands why his wife tried and thought she killed him, and why he had to kill his wife, and then why he had no other option than to look for and kill the man who made that her only option.
In “The Man With the Getaway Face,” the economy of style has the bite of a language of clarity and power, and of imagery that compares favorably with Graham Greene’s “This Gun for Hire.” Parker has killed the man who orchestrated his murder using his wife as his instrument. He then feels obliged to kill the man’s boss in “The Outfit,” which is akin to the Mafia. This set of actions has him on the run seeking anonymity in plastic surgeon. But with everything Parker does, it comes up with double crosses that he has to finesse only to again become finessed by them.
In “The Outfit,” his cover blown, and his new face now the object of the Outfit to permanently erase, Parker doesn’t run from contract killers but embraces the challenge against a stacked deck. He is a thinking man without portfolio, a man of the street, hard as nails, as resolute to exterminate his enemies as they are resolved to do him in. So, he hijacks their hijacked trucks, kills their hired guns, and disrupts their businesses, knowing all the time that this war has no end but simply new beginnings.
Crime novelist Elmore Leonard, an artist of the genre in his own right, celebrates the power and economy of Stark’s style. Leonard once advised never to start a novel with the weather. Stark goes one better: he sets the tone of the whole novel in the first sentence. In the three books I’ve read to date, here are the first sentences:
(1) “The Hunter”: “When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, Parker told him to go to hell.”
(2) “The Man With the Getaway Face”: “When the bandages came off, Parker looked in the mirror at a stranger.”
(3) “The Outfit”: “When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed.”
You get a sense in the first novel of an angry guy, in the second surprised at the disconnect between the image in the mirror and himself, and in the third something abrupt and devastating has entered the sanctuary of his uneasy peace.
These are dark or noir novels of the underbelly of society where people live in what William Faulkner called “quiet desperation.” The twenty-four novels were published from 1962 to 2008, the year of the death of their creator, Donald Westlake. You only have to listen to the nightly television news of your city to know that Parker lives, breathes, and is plotting his revenge around the corner from where you live. This gives a sense of urgency, timeliness, and trepidation against the softness and denial in which most of us encounter our daily world, choosing not to see or experience the ugliness that poisons the air we breathe.
These are not detective novels, not police journals, not law and order court dramas, but gnarled, sinewy, scarred, knotted and gripping stories of life that feeds off society but pays it no mind. The women are as hard and as cunning as the men, while love is a word that has never entered either gender’s vocabulary. Why read these novels?
If you are an inveterate reader, read these novels for the prose, style and clarity of the writing. If you are a writer, read them to experience the humbling sense of being in the presence of a master of language and ambience. If you are a student of human behavior, read them to get a sense of the ugliness that hides in us all under the patina of beauty. If you are a philosopher, and who isn’t, read them to get a sense of why the world periodically goes haywire.
* * *
Sunday, December 27, 2009
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 27, 2009
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIRS OF 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (2003) was written as a snapshot of an important era in American history, an era that is long gone now with many of the faces and facts already fading away, but never dying. It was true across America, and Clinton, Iowa. The courthouse neighborhood was but a reminder of the strength, resiliency, purpose and passion of ordinary people called on to do extraordinary things in a time of war (WWII).
Many readers have asked me over the years to provide actual pictures of the era and the young people I write about with so much affection. That is my purpose here. I hope wherever you are that this helps you remember your own roots, which bring forth similar memories.
ST. PATRICK’S CHAMPIONSHIP BASKETBALL TEAM (1945 – 1946)
From left to right: Jim Holle, Bobby Witt, Bill Christiansen; back row, Jim Fisher and Bing Shepherd. Jim Holle went on to play basketball for Clinton Junior College, Bobby Witt for Illinois Normal, and Bing Shepherd and Bill Christiansen for Iowa State University.
THE CHAMPIONSHIP COURTHOUSE TIGERS OF THE CLINTON RECREATIONAL LEAGUE, SUMMER OF 1944:
From left to right front row: Dick Morris, Bill Benson, Phil Leahy, Bobby Witt, Dick Dunmore, Russell Annear; second row, Jim Fisher, Jim Holle, Walt Ferguson, Ken Tharp, David Cavanaugh, Chuck Holm; back row, Gus Witt, Jack Dunmore, Lyle Sawyer; front row, Rock Carver and Jackie Fisher. The baseball bats spell “CHT,” which stands for the Courthouse Tigers.
Phil Leahy was honored with being Clinton's first recipient of the Niles Kinnick Academic and Athletic Scholarship at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering. Bobby Witt was three years a starter on the Clinton High Basketball Team, and a First Team All-State basketball player his senior year for the Stat of Iowa. Jack Dunmore and Gus Witt were professional baseball players on their way to the Major Leagues when their careers were interrupted by military service in W.W.II. Lyle Sawyer became an acclaimed high school teacher in Mexico and the United States. Chuck Holm and Bobby Witt became high school teachers and coaches. Bobby Witt is in the Illinois High School Hall of Fame of Coaches.
THE COURTHOUSE TIGER COACHING STAFF (in front of the Clinton County Jail):
Left to right: Lyle Sawyer, Gus Witt, Jack Dunmore, and Deputy Sheriff Jim Gaffey. In front of the group is Gus Witt’s dog, Hoimen, the Courthouse Tiger mascot.
FAST FORWARD TO 2009
Left to right: Taylor Fisher and Gus Witt. Taylor is my grandson and a baseball player at Camanche High School, Camanche, Iowa. Gus Witt has coached the baseball team at Mount St. Clare College, which then became Franciscan University. Today, it is an on-line university of some 20,000 students. Taylor Fisher is a senior in high school looking forward to playing baseball in college. Imagine some sixty years ago Gus Witt was coaching Taylor's grandfather over at the courthouse, and he still hasn't lost a step today.
FINAL WORD
Commentary on all these people can be found IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.
Be always well,
Jim
© December 27, 2009
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIRS OF 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (2003) was written as a snapshot of an important era in American history, an era that is long gone now with many of the faces and facts already fading away, but never dying. It was true across America, and Clinton, Iowa. The courthouse neighborhood was but a reminder of the strength, resiliency, purpose and passion of ordinary people called on to do extraordinary things in a time of war (WWII).
Many readers have asked me over the years to provide actual pictures of the era and the young people I write about with so much affection. That is my purpose here. I hope wherever you are that this helps you remember your own roots, which bring forth similar memories.
ST. PATRICK’S CHAMPIONSHIP BASKETBALL TEAM (1945 – 1946)
From left to right: Jim Holle, Bobby Witt, Bill Christiansen; back row, Jim Fisher and Bing Shepherd. Jim Holle went on to play basketball for Clinton Junior College, Bobby Witt for Illinois Normal, and Bing Shepherd and Bill Christiansen for Iowa State University.
THE CHAMPIONSHIP COURTHOUSE TIGERS OF THE CLINTON RECREATIONAL LEAGUE, SUMMER OF 1944:
From left to right front row: Dick Morris, Bill Benson, Phil Leahy, Bobby Witt, Dick Dunmore, Russell Annear; second row, Jim Fisher, Jim Holle, Walt Ferguson, Ken Tharp, David Cavanaugh, Chuck Holm; back row, Gus Witt, Jack Dunmore, Lyle Sawyer; front row, Rock Carver and Jackie Fisher. The baseball bats spell “CHT,” which stands for the Courthouse Tigers.
Phil Leahy was honored with being Clinton's first recipient of the Niles Kinnick Academic and Athletic Scholarship at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering. Bobby Witt was three years a starter on the Clinton High Basketball Team, and a First Team All-State basketball player his senior year for the Stat of Iowa. Jack Dunmore and Gus Witt were professional baseball players on their way to the Major Leagues when their careers were interrupted by military service in W.W.II. Lyle Sawyer became an acclaimed high school teacher in Mexico and the United States. Chuck Holm and Bobby Witt became high school teachers and coaches. Bobby Witt is in the Illinois High School Hall of Fame of Coaches.
THE COURTHOUSE TIGER COACHING STAFF (in front of the Clinton County Jail):
Left to right: Lyle Sawyer, Gus Witt, Jack Dunmore, and Deputy Sheriff Jim Gaffey. In front of the group is Gus Witt’s dog, Hoimen, the Courthouse Tiger mascot.
FAST FORWARD TO 2009
Left to right: Taylor Fisher and Gus Witt. Taylor is my grandson and a baseball player at Camanche High School, Camanche, Iowa. Gus Witt has coached the baseball team at Mount St. Clare College, which then became Franciscan University. Today, it is an on-line university of some 20,000 students. Taylor Fisher is a senior in high school looking forward to playing baseball in college. Imagine some sixty years ago Gus Witt was coaching Taylor's grandfather over at the courthouse, and he still hasn't lost a step today.
FINAL WORD
Commentary on all these people can be found IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.
Be always well,
Jim
Friday, December 25, 2009
PROFESSIONALS WAIT FOR PERMISSION TO TAKE CHARGE!
THE DILEMMA OF OUR TIMES – PROFESSIONALS WAIT FOR PERMISSION TO TAKE CHARGE!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 25, 2009
* * *
There is a central theme to Dr. Fisher's body of work, and that is "cultural capital." What is cultural capital? It is the grand total of will, resolution and intellectual capacity to exert change and sustain the momentum and direction of that change in a positive and synergistic direction.
Dr. Fisher’s books are linchpins in building a skeletal structure of possibility in a climate of chaos, confusion, conflict and creative opportunity. The world improves one person at a time, and that improvement is predicated on the individual showing the will to prevail with the capacity and maturity to accept and deal with the inevitable challenges of an ever changing and more complex world.
"Cultural capital" is the intellectual capital and the power of the people. Dr. Fisher has studied and tracked the process or acculturation and change as intellectual capital and power has transitioned and concomitantly “changed hands” over the centuries. It is this phenomenon that always finds lagging indicators holding up and sometimes even derailing smooth transitions from one dominate group to another. He has developed The Fisher Paradigm ™ to explain and track this observable fact with three interlocking spheres of influence: Personality Profiles, Geographic Profiles, and Demographic Profiles.
* * *
Over the ages:
(1) Explorers dominated in the fifteenth century led by such men as Vasco de Gama, Hernando Cortez, and Ferdinand Magellan.
(2) Theologians emerged from the Dark Ages of the sixteenth century to breathe new life into Western man in the persons of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus.
(3) Pilgrims in their quest for freedom of religion and expression in the seventeenth century ventured to the New World to land on Plymouth Rock in North America, while a similar group of Dutch and French Huguenots established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope in Southern Africa.
(4) Lawyers were the force of the eighteenth century as commercial expansion and capitalism were thriving and King George III of England provoked the American Revolution and the subsequent independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America, while the antics of King Louis XVI in France precipitated the French Revolution. Constitutional law translated rebellion into the rights of man.
(5) Engineers showed the way in the nineteenth century fueling the Industrial Revolution, the building of the Suez Canal and the Eiffel Tower, while introducing the telegraph, telephone, electricity, the modern factory and city, and establishing a new way to wage war with the American Civil War, the first fully technological war.
(6) Managers dominated the twentieth century with the invention of mass production and logistical control creating a well-oiled machine in which workers were essentially interchangeable parts. Modern management was born in WWI and perfected in WWII with battlefield success the product of a well-managed military industrial complex spelling the difference. It was the management of science and technology that proved the superiority of the West over the Axis Powers of WWII.
(7) Professional workers represent the twenty-first century with the cultural capital, that is, the intellectual capital and power to integrate its predecessors in the story of man. Professionals embody the collective wisdom of explorers, theologians, pilgrims, lawgivers, engineers, and managers. They are now on center stage, reluctant inhabitants of this singular focus. They have been educated, acculturated and programmed for another time, and lack the maturity, temperament, capacity and energy to take charge, but take charge they must. It is their century. Thus far they have treated their tools as toys and have attempted to escape reality in virtual reality living on the Internet, biding their time. The world waits for them to wake up and accept their new role.
* * *
It is the purpose of Dr. Fisher’s body of work and this blog to help them in that regard.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 25, 2009
* * *
There is a central theme to Dr. Fisher's body of work, and that is "cultural capital." What is cultural capital? It is the grand total of will, resolution and intellectual capacity to exert change and sustain the momentum and direction of that change in a positive and synergistic direction.
Dr. Fisher’s books are linchpins in building a skeletal structure of possibility in a climate of chaos, confusion, conflict and creative opportunity. The world improves one person at a time, and that improvement is predicated on the individual showing the will to prevail with the capacity and maturity to accept and deal with the inevitable challenges of an ever changing and more complex world.
"Cultural capital" is the intellectual capital and the power of the people. Dr. Fisher has studied and tracked the process or acculturation and change as intellectual capital and power has transitioned and concomitantly “changed hands” over the centuries. It is this phenomenon that always finds lagging indicators holding up and sometimes even derailing smooth transitions from one dominate group to another. He has developed The Fisher Paradigm ™ to explain and track this observable fact with three interlocking spheres of influence: Personality Profiles, Geographic Profiles, and Demographic Profiles.
* * *
Over the ages:
(1) Explorers dominated in the fifteenth century led by such men as Vasco de Gama, Hernando Cortez, and Ferdinand Magellan.
(2) Theologians emerged from the Dark Ages of the sixteenth century to breathe new life into Western man in the persons of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus.
(3) Pilgrims in their quest for freedom of religion and expression in the seventeenth century ventured to the New World to land on Plymouth Rock in North America, while a similar group of Dutch and French Huguenots established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope in Southern Africa.
(4) Lawyers were the force of the eighteenth century as commercial expansion and capitalism were thriving and King George III of England provoked the American Revolution and the subsequent independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America, while the antics of King Louis XVI in France precipitated the French Revolution. Constitutional law translated rebellion into the rights of man.
(5) Engineers showed the way in the nineteenth century fueling the Industrial Revolution, the building of the Suez Canal and the Eiffel Tower, while introducing the telegraph, telephone, electricity, the modern factory and city, and establishing a new way to wage war with the American Civil War, the first fully technological war.
(6) Managers dominated the twentieth century with the invention of mass production and logistical control creating a well-oiled machine in which workers were essentially interchangeable parts. Modern management was born in WWI and perfected in WWII with battlefield success the product of a well-managed military industrial complex spelling the difference. It was the management of science and technology that proved the superiority of the West over the Axis Powers of WWII.
(7) Professional workers represent the twenty-first century with the cultural capital, that is, the intellectual capital and power to integrate its predecessors in the story of man. Professionals embody the collective wisdom of explorers, theologians, pilgrims, lawgivers, engineers, and managers. They are now on center stage, reluctant inhabitants of this singular focus. They have been educated, acculturated and programmed for another time, and lack the maturity, temperament, capacity and energy to take charge, but take charge they must. It is their century. Thus far they have treated their tools as toys and have attempted to escape reality in virtual reality living on the Internet, biding their time. The world waits for them to wake up and accept their new role.
* * *
It is the purpose of Dr. Fisher’s body of work and this blog to help them in that regard.
* * *
Thursday, December 24, 2009
JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D., BIOGRAPHY AND BODY OF WORKS!
JAMES R. FISHER, JR., PH.D. BIOGRAPHY and BODY OF WORK
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 24, 2009
* * *
Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. started out as a chemist, then chemical sales engineer, then a Nalco Chemical Company executive. He retired the first time in his mid-thirties went back to school for six years, year around, to acquire his Ph.D. in organizational-industrial psychology, consulting on the side followed by becoming an adjunct professor. He then reentered the corporation as a psychologist for Honeywell, Inc., again being promoted to executive status by Honeywell Europe, Ltd., retiring for the second time in 1990.
He put himself through college working as a laborer in a chemical plant, has experienced college at all levels, undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate education. In the late 1950s, he was a member of the crew of the USS Salem CA-139 operating in the Mediterranean Sea. As a professional, he has worked at every level of the complex organization in both line and staff positions from production, research & development, sales & marketing, to mid-level and top management to the boardroom. He has lived and worked across the United States, South America, Europe and South Africa. He is now writing a novel of his time in South Africa during the reign of apartheid.
Everything he writes, whether nonfiction or fiction, emanates from his empirical experience. He identifies his work as "cultural capital," seeing Western society and its economy, social, industrial and cultural life in radical transition. Western institutions from the family, church, school, government, business and leisure are in shambles looking for a Sphinx to bring them back from their ashes.
Others have written about such things, but with Dr. Fisher there is a personal bite to his prose that ordinary people cannot escape, as they no longer have masters but are now masters of their own fate, something they would still rather pass on to others. They like to believe they have had no complicity in the collapse of the automotive industry or the failure of Wall Street in the recent past, that they were innocent and helpless victims of the charade. He will have none of it.
Dr. Fisher claims everyone is a leader or no one is, that "cultural capital" relates to the risk-taking, self-esteem, social cohesion, work ethics and habits, and relationships to power of everyone. The workforce, he writes, has changed from primarily manual power to predominantly brainpower, from blue-collar to white-collar, from unskilled to professionals. Yet, despite this changing workforce and climate, with power shifting from management to workers with decision-making primarily at the level of consequences of work, workers continue to be managed, motivated, mobilized and manipulated as if it is 1945 except cosmetically. The system, he says, is anachronistic and management is atavistic.
The hierarchical organizational structure is no longer effective much less relevant. Workers have the power but want to enjoy the fruits of such power without the responsibilities or accountability of such power. They want security and have traditionally been willing to sacrifice power for guarantees, but in the postmodern world no such reality exists except in virtual reality.
Dr. Fisher looks at problems from the perspective of ordinary people and therefore his books are not entertaining but gut wrenching.
* * *
CONFIDENT SELLING (1970) was written in six weeks and sent off to Prentice-Hall, Inc. without protocol as "Let's Take The Worry Out Of Selling." He discovered going from a lab rat or chemist to a chemical sales engineer that the greatest problem in selling was not the buyer, but the seller. He never read sales books but taught himself to sell on the basis of this premise, and became the most successful salesmen in his district, being promoted to an area manager, and then to an international corporate executive in a brief six years. Confident Selling was in print for twenty years (1970 - 1990), serialized in a national sales magazine, airline magazine, and the basis of college courses in sales psychology.
* * *
WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES (1990) signals the rise of the worker and the demise of the manager in the work environment. It predicts the collapse of the automotive industry and the reluctance of management in every endeavor to share power with workers, and the consequences of this reluctance. It introduces to the reader the "social termites" that invade the workplace as six passive silent behaviors that destroy the workplace from within while remaining essentially invisible. Industry Week named it one of the ten best business books of 1991, the Business Book Review Journal named it one of the four best, The Wall Street Journal alerted management to its provocative indictment, while National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" gave it a positive review.
* * *
CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) is an elaboration of Confident Selling with a more sophisticated toolbox and tool kit for the reader. It claimed that everyone whatever the nature of the work is in the business of selling, and that the buyer is not the problem but the seller, often failing to package, promote, and persist in the competitive struggle of putting the best face on his or her efforts. The idea that selling is "that profession" equivalent to intimidators and manipulators is characterized as not only a myth but the most destructive force of all in the failure of the individual to make adequate progress in his or her career and life. Confident Selling for the 90s was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for 1992. It is as relevant today as it was in the 1990s as awareness of the individual's challenge has not receded but intensified.
* * *
THE WORKER, ALONE! GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN! (1995) is a call to battle of professionals claiming they have no choice but to get beyond the charade of empowerment and cosmetic change and to take charge by taking action. The chapter headings alone tell the story: (1) An Upside Down World; (2) Silent Invasions; (2) The Price of Innocence; (4) Late Blooming Roses; (5) Architects of a Failed System; (6) Not Happy Campers; (7) The Challenge of Learning; (8) A Question of Control; (9) Going Against the Grain; (10) Life Without A Cause! Alas, virtually everything Dr. Fisher felt might transpire has, and yet professionals are still looking for someone else to blame or provide the miracle. The book is a wake up call and a description of the dilemma if it is not heeded.
* * *
THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996) is an attack on the fact that American culture programs its young to be self-hating. The book was a response to an article by Dr. Fisher published in the June 1993 issue of The Reader's Digest, which opens with the line: "To have a friend you must be a friend starting with yourself." It generated thousands of requests for reprints, and a call by The Reader's Digest for Dr. Fisher's opinion on such matters. Unfortunately, some readers saw it as a guide to self-assertion. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was instead a conversation with the reader to understand how he or she has become programmed to be so negative and self-hating, and what can be done about it. Self-assertion is not an end but a process, which requires reprogramming. The book shows how this can happen.
* * *
SIX SILENT KILLERS: MANAGEMENT'S GREATEST CHALLENGE (1998) looks inside all the fault lines, all the end runs, and hapless interventions of human resources management that have resulted in a passive, reactive and dependent workforce. For the past sixty years or since World War II, corporate management and the unions have been complicit in destroying the will and independence of workers to (1) make choices; (2) make decisions; (3) act as individual contractors; and (4) mature into contributing adults. Systematically, management and unions have contrived, Dr. Fisher insists, to make workers counterdependent upon the organization for their total well being, which has found workers - both blue-collar and white-collar -- self-indulgent and suspended in terminal adolescence with the mindset of a twelve-year-old. Now, when workers are needed as independent contractors and partners in enterprise, the sixty years of programming are all wrong for the demands of the times. Consequently, workers have retreated into the arms of the "six silent killers" of passive behavior. The Conference Board of the Wall Street Journal advocates that SIX SILENT KILLERS is a book every executive in America should read and resolve to change, or suffer the consequences. The first decade of the twenty-first century has made those consequences quite palpable.
* * *
CORPORATE SIN: LEADERLESS LEADERS AND DISSONANT WORKERS (2000) indicates there is no payoff in pointing fingers as managers and workers have both approached the abyss in equal ignorance. While the East and Wall Street continue to see themselves as the center of the universe, circumstances have proven them wrong. There isn't an institution that Dr. Fisher doesn't find guilty of "corporate sin." And what is corporate sin? It is the failure of leaders and workers to understand and deal diligently and effectively with the times. He shows how Harvard, Yale, Princeton Elite (HYPE) have driven society into the ground while celebrating their crisis management strategies, which he claims only solve the problems they create. We have gone from a culture of comfort (unconscious incompetence) to a culture of complacency (conscious incompetence) while believing the Ship of State was being steered to a culture of contribution (conscious competence). Meanwhile, the initiative has shifted from the United States to the Far East, just as it did a hundred years ago from Europe to America. Meanwhile, he claims we have lost our moral compass and our way: "In a society without a moral compass, we easily become addicted to affluence and obsessed with irrelevance." Ten years after it was published, the Federal Reserve bailed out banks "too big to fail," and once functioning again, what did these banks do? They paid themselves $billion bonuses with the rationale, if they hadn't they couldn't compete. So, the more things go around they come around.
* * *
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (2003) is a personal snapshot of Clinton, Iowa in the middle of the twentieth century in the middle of the community and during World War II from the perspective of working class families and the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. Clinton was a thriving industrial community on the banks of the Mississippi River with a population of 33,000 dedicated to and involved in the war effort. There was no television, no mega sports, or manicured lawns. There was radio, movies, high school sports, the Clinton Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played baseball for the fun of it. Clintonians had victory gardens where their front lawns once were, drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode their bikes to work. It was a time when the four faces of the Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed every half hour, and therefore young people had no excuse not to be home in time for meals prepared from victory garden staples. The courthouse neighborhood had most stay-at-home mothers in two-parent families. Few parents managed to get beyond grammar school, nearly all worked in the Clinton factories or on the railroad. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language. It was a time in hot weather people often slept in Riverview Park, left windows of their homes open, and doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house unchained, and if they had a car, knowing neither stranger nor neighbor would disturb their possessions, left the keys in the car. In winter, schools never closed even when shoveled snow banks were four feet high. It was also a time when kids created their own play, as parents were too busy or tired to be involved. Clinton youngsters would never again know such Darwinian freedom, or its concomitant brutality. There was no point in crying or running to mother if you weren't chosen. Kids learned to find their own alternatives. It was a different time with people of a different mindset and it has been lost to nostalgia.
* * *
A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007) shows a remarkable repeat of the same sins, the same misadventures, the same false steps as were true in the 1970s, when this original essay was first written. Dr. Fisher shows how young people were forced to participate and die in an unpopular Vietnam War, a time when political upheaval was in the air, when corrupt politicians and change agents had lied and deceived the public with the Watergate fiasco, when drugs were ruining lives, when morality took a holiday, when new forms of bigotry and hatred were hatching, when the automotive industry was in sharp decline, while foreign automakers were eating our lunch; when an energy crisis rocked the country with the OPEC embargo, when a paranoid president hunkered down and became a law unto himself, when Congress stayed the same, missed the changes, and left the future up for grabs. Dr. Fisher uses the device of a look backward because the indicators were all there that we were heading for trouble, a trouble that now consumes us at every level.
This is his body of work to date, which you can see is consistent with the theme of "cultural capital," which he pursues with unrelenting zeal.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 24, 2009
* * *
Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. started out as a chemist, then chemical sales engineer, then a Nalco Chemical Company executive. He retired the first time in his mid-thirties went back to school for six years, year around, to acquire his Ph.D. in organizational-industrial psychology, consulting on the side followed by becoming an adjunct professor. He then reentered the corporation as a psychologist for Honeywell, Inc., again being promoted to executive status by Honeywell Europe, Ltd., retiring for the second time in 1990.
He put himself through college working as a laborer in a chemical plant, has experienced college at all levels, undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate education. In the late 1950s, he was a member of the crew of the USS Salem CA-139 operating in the Mediterranean Sea. As a professional, he has worked at every level of the complex organization in both line and staff positions from production, research & development, sales & marketing, to mid-level and top management to the boardroom. He has lived and worked across the United States, South America, Europe and South Africa. He is now writing a novel of his time in South Africa during the reign of apartheid.
Everything he writes, whether nonfiction or fiction, emanates from his empirical experience. He identifies his work as "cultural capital," seeing Western society and its economy, social, industrial and cultural life in radical transition. Western institutions from the family, church, school, government, business and leisure are in shambles looking for a Sphinx to bring them back from their ashes.
Others have written about such things, but with Dr. Fisher there is a personal bite to his prose that ordinary people cannot escape, as they no longer have masters but are now masters of their own fate, something they would still rather pass on to others. They like to believe they have had no complicity in the collapse of the automotive industry or the failure of Wall Street in the recent past, that they were innocent and helpless victims of the charade. He will have none of it.
Dr. Fisher claims everyone is a leader or no one is, that "cultural capital" relates to the risk-taking, self-esteem, social cohesion, work ethics and habits, and relationships to power of everyone. The workforce, he writes, has changed from primarily manual power to predominantly brainpower, from blue-collar to white-collar, from unskilled to professionals. Yet, despite this changing workforce and climate, with power shifting from management to workers with decision-making primarily at the level of consequences of work, workers continue to be managed, motivated, mobilized and manipulated as if it is 1945 except cosmetically. The system, he says, is anachronistic and management is atavistic.
The hierarchical organizational structure is no longer effective much less relevant. Workers have the power but want to enjoy the fruits of such power without the responsibilities or accountability of such power. They want security and have traditionally been willing to sacrifice power for guarantees, but in the postmodern world no such reality exists except in virtual reality.
Dr. Fisher looks at problems from the perspective of ordinary people and therefore his books are not entertaining but gut wrenching.
* * *
CONFIDENT SELLING (1970) was written in six weeks and sent off to Prentice-Hall, Inc. without protocol as "Let's Take The Worry Out Of Selling." He discovered going from a lab rat or chemist to a chemical sales engineer that the greatest problem in selling was not the buyer, but the seller. He never read sales books but taught himself to sell on the basis of this premise, and became the most successful salesmen in his district, being promoted to an area manager, and then to an international corporate executive in a brief six years. Confident Selling was in print for twenty years (1970 - 1990), serialized in a national sales magazine, airline magazine, and the basis of college courses in sales psychology.
* * *
WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES (1990) signals the rise of the worker and the demise of the manager in the work environment. It predicts the collapse of the automotive industry and the reluctance of management in every endeavor to share power with workers, and the consequences of this reluctance. It introduces to the reader the "social termites" that invade the workplace as six passive silent behaviors that destroy the workplace from within while remaining essentially invisible. Industry Week named it one of the ten best business books of 1991, the Business Book Review Journal named it one of the four best, The Wall Street Journal alerted management to its provocative indictment, while National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" gave it a positive review.
* * *
CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) is an elaboration of Confident Selling with a more sophisticated toolbox and tool kit for the reader. It claimed that everyone whatever the nature of the work is in the business of selling, and that the buyer is not the problem but the seller, often failing to package, promote, and persist in the competitive struggle of putting the best face on his or her efforts. The idea that selling is "that profession" equivalent to intimidators and manipulators is characterized as not only a myth but the most destructive force of all in the failure of the individual to make adequate progress in his or her career and life. Confident Selling for the 90s was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for 1992. It is as relevant today as it was in the 1990s as awareness of the individual's challenge has not receded but intensified.
* * *
THE WORKER, ALONE! GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN! (1995) is a call to battle of professionals claiming they have no choice but to get beyond the charade of empowerment and cosmetic change and to take charge by taking action. The chapter headings alone tell the story: (1) An Upside Down World; (2) Silent Invasions; (2) The Price of Innocence; (4) Late Blooming Roses; (5) Architects of a Failed System; (6) Not Happy Campers; (7) The Challenge of Learning; (8) A Question of Control; (9) Going Against the Grain; (10) Life Without A Cause! Alas, virtually everything Dr. Fisher felt might transpire has, and yet professionals are still looking for someone else to blame or provide the miracle. The book is a wake up call and a description of the dilemma if it is not heeded.
* * *
THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996) is an attack on the fact that American culture programs its young to be self-hating. The book was a response to an article by Dr. Fisher published in the June 1993 issue of The Reader's Digest, which opens with the line: "To have a friend you must be a friend starting with yourself." It generated thousands of requests for reprints, and a call by The Reader's Digest for Dr. Fisher's opinion on such matters. Unfortunately, some readers saw it as a guide to self-assertion. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was instead a conversation with the reader to understand how he or she has become programmed to be so negative and self-hating, and what can be done about it. Self-assertion is not an end but a process, which requires reprogramming. The book shows how this can happen.
* * *
SIX SILENT KILLERS: MANAGEMENT'S GREATEST CHALLENGE (1998) looks inside all the fault lines, all the end runs, and hapless interventions of human resources management that have resulted in a passive, reactive and dependent workforce. For the past sixty years or since World War II, corporate management and the unions have been complicit in destroying the will and independence of workers to (1) make choices; (2) make decisions; (3) act as individual contractors; and (4) mature into contributing adults. Systematically, management and unions have contrived, Dr. Fisher insists, to make workers counterdependent upon the organization for their total well being, which has found workers - both blue-collar and white-collar -- self-indulgent and suspended in terminal adolescence with the mindset of a twelve-year-old. Now, when workers are needed as independent contractors and partners in enterprise, the sixty years of programming are all wrong for the demands of the times. Consequently, workers have retreated into the arms of the "six silent killers" of passive behavior. The Conference Board of the Wall Street Journal advocates that SIX SILENT KILLERS is a book every executive in America should read and resolve to change, or suffer the consequences. The first decade of the twenty-first century has made those consequences quite palpable.
* * *
CORPORATE SIN: LEADERLESS LEADERS AND DISSONANT WORKERS (2000) indicates there is no payoff in pointing fingers as managers and workers have both approached the abyss in equal ignorance. While the East and Wall Street continue to see themselves as the center of the universe, circumstances have proven them wrong. There isn't an institution that Dr. Fisher doesn't find guilty of "corporate sin." And what is corporate sin? It is the failure of leaders and workers to understand and deal diligently and effectively with the times. He shows how Harvard, Yale, Princeton Elite (HYPE) have driven society into the ground while celebrating their crisis management strategies, which he claims only solve the problems they create. We have gone from a culture of comfort (unconscious incompetence) to a culture of complacency (conscious incompetence) while believing the Ship of State was being steered to a culture of contribution (conscious competence). Meanwhile, the initiative has shifted from the United States to the Far East, just as it did a hundred years ago from Europe to America. Meanwhile, he claims we have lost our moral compass and our way: "In a society without a moral compass, we easily become addicted to affluence and obsessed with irrelevance." Ten years after it was published, the Federal Reserve bailed out banks "too big to fail," and once functioning again, what did these banks do? They paid themselves $billion bonuses with the rationale, if they hadn't they couldn't compete. So, the more things go around they come around.
* * *
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (2003) is a personal snapshot of Clinton, Iowa in the middle of the twentieth century in the middle of the community and during World War II from the perspective of working class families and the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. Clinton was a thriving industrial community on the banks of the Mississippi River with a population of 33,000 dedicated to and involved in the war effort. There was no television, no mega sports, or manicured lawns. There was radio, movies, high school sports, the Clinton Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played baseball for the fun of it. Clintonians had victory gardens where their front lawns once were, drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode their bikes to work. It was a time when the four faces of the Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed every half hour, and therefore young people had no excuse not to be home in time for meals prepared from victory garden staples. The courthouse neighborhood had most stay-at-home mothers in two-parent families. Few parents managed to get beyond grammar school, nearly all worked in the Clinton factories or on the railroad. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language. It was a time in hot weather people often slept in Riverview Park, left windows of their homes open, and doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house unchained, and if they had a car, knowing neither stranger nor neighbor would disturb their possessions, left the keys in the car. In winter, schools never closed even when shoveled snow banks were four feet high. It was also a time when kids created their own play, as parents were too busy or tired to be involved. Clinton youngsters would never again know such Darwinian freedom, or its concomitant brutality. There was no point in crying or running to mother if you weren't chosen. Kids learned to find their own alternatives. It was a different time with people of a different mindset and it has been lost to nostalgia.
* * *
A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007) shows a remarkable repeat of the same sins, the same misadventures, the same false steps as were true in the 1970s, when this original essay was first written. Dr. Fisher shows how young people were forced to participate and die in an unpopular Vietnam War, a time when political upheaval was in the air, when corrupt politicians and change agents had lied and deceived the public with the Watergate fiasco, when drugs were ruining lives, when morality took a holiday, when new forms of bigotry and hatred were hatching, when the automotive industry was in sharp decline, while foreign automakers were eating our lunch; when an energy crisis rocked the country with the OPEC embargo, when a paranoid president hunkered down and became a law unto himself, when Congress stayed the same, missed the changes, and left the future up for grabs. Dr. Fisher uses the device of a look backward because the indicators were all there that we were heading for trouble, a trouble that now consumes us at every level.
This is his body of work to date, which you can see is consistent with the theme of "cultural capital," which he pursues with unrelenting zeal.
* * *
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
A SHORT STORY IN VERSE -- ONE
A SHORT STORY IN VERSE -- ONE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 22, 2009
The train station was a relic of the past, now a soot covered red brick block building with crumbling cornices that once flared out with energy and confidence. It is located stolidly on Nebraska Avenue at the entrance to Ybor City, the Cuban community that once displayed a booming Cuban cigar manufacturing industry. Now, the decorative streets are empty, the balloon lights of Seventh Street opague with age, the recreational square once alive with ageless bowlers now unattended, while the rich aroma of tobacco coming from factories and warehouses now only a stale odor. Only montages in Cuban restaurants show scores of workers carefully wrapping leaves of tobacco while the caller reads the daily newspaper to them in Spanish.
The past here was all but dead, as was Seamus “Dirk” Devlin, although only 38, as he made his way into the Amtrak Railroad Depot for a coffee.
The station's waiting room with its giant rafters in the ceiling and long benches far below was dark, dusty and dreary. Yet Devlin came here every day to wrap its deadness around him because of one bright candle of light, a young lady named Bonnie serving coffee. Radiant as her light, he noticed she had difficulty making change. He chose to give this little mind as in his deadness she was keeping him alive.
“I’ve written you another poem.” He had asked her to read his previous poems but she demurred. It soon became apparent she could not read. It saddened him to see one so lovely so handicapped in life. But then he thought, who is more handicapped them I?
She puckered up her nose, smiled shyly and said, “Please, Shaymus, read it to me, please!”
Devlin took a sip of his coffee, after adding cream and sugar, and felt his body once again become alive with its warmth, warmth he only felt of late when he was writing his poetry. “It is not very good. You might think it a bit sentimental.”
“Senti-what, what do you mean Shaymus?”
“Syrupy like the sugar I load my coffee with.”
“Oh, silly, I’d never think that. Please read it.”
So he did.
* * *
I close my eyes and I see you there, wild eyes, and a loving stare,
I open my soul and I see you there Irish nose and a lass so fair,
I dream my dream and I see you there, loving lips and a taste so rare,
I fly to thee and I see you there sensual form and a love to bare.
* * *
“That’s it!” He waits. Tears form in the corner of her eyes.
“That’s about me?”
“Well, yes, I mean, yes, yes it’s about you.”
“It’s so loving. It’s so different than your last poem about me.”
Devlin felt awkward. He knew what she meant but feigned being confused. She read his eyes.
“We live in different worlds, Shaymus. Mine is full of danger.”
“The world is a dangerous place.”
“Now, you’re doing it again. You’re saying something that has no meaning to me and saddens me when you talk that way. I pick fruit, Shaymus, and have since I was a little girl. My mother is an exotic dancer and we have a house now, but only until she has to find another job. Then we move on and I pick fruit with the seasons.”
“How old is your mother?”
“Thirty three. She had me when she was fourteen.” She smiles. “We’re practically sisters.”
“And your father?”
“Never met him. Have had a lot of uncles over the years that have bunked down with us, but never a father.”
“Any siblings, any brother or sisters?”
“No, why do you ask?” She puckered her lips.
“No reason.”
“You're married!”
“Yes.”
“Any children?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“More than one.”
“What do you do? You’re here practically every day.”
“Nothing much.”
“Nothing much? How can you afford that?”
“I used to work. I’m vegetating now. I mean, I’m a bit of a bum now.”
“You don’t look like a bum, don't apeak or dress like a bum. You look like somebody important. Shaymus are you important?”
“Alas, no!”
“Were you important?”
“No, never, Bonnie, I’m just an ordinary person.”
“When you talk like that staring at me, you make me nervous.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. It is just that your deep blue eyes are a bit fierce sometimes. How do you explain that?”
Silence.
“Do you have that poem with you that sounded like a song.” He looked puzzled. “The one where you describe me as Angel Hair.”
“I read that last time and you cried. I don’t want to make you cry.”
“Do you know why I was crying?”
“Because I upset you?”
“Because Shaymus you touched my heart. Please, read it again."
And so Devlin did.
* * *
Angel hair, spirit of steel, christened to this restless night,
Boil with beauty, flash with anger, live my love til dawn’s daylight.
Bonnie over the bounty, Bonnie over the sea, Bonnie restless Bonnie never stop fighting with glee.
Angel hair, spirit of steel, christened to this restless night,
Dance what moves you, glance where would you, live my love and claim thy right.
Bonnie over the bounty, Bonnie over the sea, Bonnie precious Bonnie, never stop living so free.
You, old as time, young as night, me, ever mindful, never time full, watching whence there looms thy light,
Born worn, girl woman of mind, nature naturing ever so kind, taste me with scent’s magic eyes, let us caress lest we surmise, be daring as the hour’s dim, thank God for love for nature’s whim,
Bonnie is as Bonnie was, the moment, restless moment, twas, the cause of joy, a new found heart, a love of birds, of sea, of wind and art,
Blessed be these merry atoms of eternity, a fool nigh old, a golden lass, locked in thought, the moments pass,
Bonnie over the bounty, Bonnie over the sea, Bonnie, lovely Bonnie, never stop flying to me.
* * *
She cried again, excused herself and went to the restroom. When she came back, Devlin could smell cigarettes in her hair and whiskey on her breath. She was however more composed.
“You are a strange man.”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“But a strange beautiful man. What do you want of me, Shaymus?”
The question shattered his composure yet he could not find his voice. She studied him.
“Life is such a puzzle to you, isn’t it Shaymus.”
He looked away.
“My world is not the answer. My world could kill you. The answer is in your world if it is anywhere. There is no love in my world, Shaymus, and you are in love with love. I can’t help you and it saddens me. I don’t know if love exists. I only know it doesn’t in my world, perhaps not in yours either but I still hope you find it.”
“We always end this way,” he managed finally, “have you noticed that? Here I am twice your age and you try to comfort me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because we live in different worlds and you refuse to see that.”
“Can I come by again?”
“I’ll think about it.”
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 22, 2009
The train station was a relic of the past, now a soot covered red brick block building with crumbling cornices that once flared out with energy and confidence. It is located stolidly on Nebraska Avenue at the entrance to Ybor City, the Cuban community that once displayed a booming Cuban cigar manufacturing industry. Now, the decorative streets are empty, the balloon lights of Seventh Street opague with age, the recreational square once alive with ageless bowlers now unattended, while the rich aroma of tobacco coming from factories and warehouses now only a stale odor. Only montages in Cuban restaurants show scores of workers carefully wrapping leaves of tobacco while the caller reads the daily newspaper to them in Spanish.
The past here was all but dead, as was Seamus “Dirk” Devlin, although only 38, as he made his way into the Amtrak Railroad Depot for a coffee.
The station's waiting room with its giant rafters in the ceiling and long benches far below was dark, dusty and dreary. Yet Devlin came here every day to wrap its deadness around him because of one bright candle of light, a young lady named Bonnie serving coffee. Radiant as her light, he noticed she had difficulty making change. He chose to give this little mind as in his deadness she was keeping him alive.
“I’ve written you another poem.” He had asked her to read his previous poems but she demurred. It soon became apparent she could not read. It saddened him to see one so lovely so handicapped in life. But then he thought, who is more handicapped them I?
She puckered up her nose, smiled shyly and said, “Please, Shaymus, read it to me, please!”
Devlin took a sip of his coffee, after adding cream and sugar, and felt his body once again become alive with its warmth, warmth he only felt of late when he was writing his poetry. “It is not very good. You might think it a bit sentimental.”
“Senti-what, what do you mean Shaymus?”
“Syrupy like the sugar I load my coffee with.”
“Oh, silly, I’d never think that. Please read it.”
So he did.
* * *
I close my eyes and I see you there, wild eyes, and a loving stare,
I open my soul and I see you there Irish nose and a lass so fair,
I dream my dream and I see you there, loving lips and a taste so rare,
I fly to thee and I see you there sensual form and a love to bare.
* * *
“That’s it!” He waits. Tears form in the corner of her eyes.
“That’s about me?”
“Well, yes, I mean, yes, yes it’s about you.”
“It’s so loving. It’s so different than your last poem about me.”
Devlin felt awkward. He knew what she meant but feigned being confused. She read his eyes.
“We live in different worlds, Shaymus. Mine is full of danger.”
“The world is a dangerous place.”
“Now, you’re doing it again. You’re saying something that has no meaning to me and saddens me when you talk that way. I pick fruit, Shaymus, and have since I was a little girl. My mother is an exotic dancer and we have a house now, but only until she has to find another job. Then we move on and I pick fruit with the seasons.”
“How old is your mother?”
“Thirty three. She had me when she was fourteen.” She smiles. “We’re practically sisters.”
“And your father?”
“Never met him. Have had a lot of uncles over the years that have bunked down with us, but never a father.”
“Any siblings, any brother or sisters?”
“No, why do you ask?” She puckered her lips.
“No reason.”
“You're married!”
“Yes.”
“Any children?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“More than one.”
“What do you do? You’re here practically every day.”
“Nothing much.”
“Nothing much? How can you afford that?”
“I used to work. I’m vegetating now. I mean, I’m a bit of a bum now.”
“You don’t look like a bum, don't apeak or dress like a bum. You look like somebody important. Shaymus are you important?”
“Alas, no!”
“Were you important?”
“No, never, Bonnie, I’m just an ordinary person.”
“When you talk like that staring at me, you make me nervous.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. It is just that your deep blue eyes are a bit fierce sometimes. How do you explain that?”
Silence.
“Do you have that poem with you that sounded like a song.” He looked puzzled. “The one where you describe me as Angel Hair.”
“I read that last time and you cried. I don’t want to make you cry.”
“Do you know why I was crying?”
“Because I upset you?”
“Because Shaymus you touched my heart. Please, read it again."
And so Devlin did.
* * *
Angel hair, spirit of steel, christened to this restless night,
Boil with beauty, flash with anger, live my love til dawn’s daylight.
Bonnie over the bounty, Bonnie over the sea, Bonnie restless Bonnie never stop fighting with glee.
Angel hair, spirit of steel, christened to this restless night,
Dance what moves you, glance where would you, live my love and claim thy right.
Bonnie over the bounty, Bonnie over the sea, Bonnie precious Bonnie, never stop living so free.
You, old as time, young as night, me, ever mindful, never time full, watching whence there looms thy light,
Born worn, girl woman of mind, nature naturing ever so kind, taste me with scent’s magic eyes, let us caress lest we surmise, be daring as the hour’s dim, thank God for love for nature’s whim,
Bonnie is as Bonnie was, the moment, restless moment, twas, the cause of joy, a new found heart, a love of birds, of sea, of wind and art,
Blessed be these merry atoms of eternity, a fool nigh old, a golden lass, locked in thought, the moments pass,
Bonnie over the bounty, Bonnie over the sea, Bonnie, lovely Bonnie, never stop flying to me.
* * *
She cried again, excused herself and went to the restroom. When she came back, Devlin could smell cigarettes in her hair and whiskey on her breath. She was however more composed.
“You are a strange man.”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“But a strange beautiful man. What do you want of me, Shaymus?”
The question shattered his composure yet he could not find his voice. She studied him.
“Life is such a puzzle to you, isn’t it Shaymus.”
He looked away.
“My world is not the answer. My world could kill you. The answer is in your world if it is anywhere. There is no love in my world, Shaymus, and you are in love with love. I can’t help you and it saddens me. I don’t know if love exists. I only know it doesn’t in my world, perhaps not in yours either but I still hope you find it.”
“We always end this way,” he managed finally, “have you noticed that? Here I am twice your age and you try to comfort me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because we live in different worlds and you refuse to see that.”
“Can I come by again?”
“I’ll think about it.”
* * *
Monday, December 21, 2009
A DIFFERENT CHRISTMAS MESSAGE!
A DIFFERENT CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 21, 2009
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Sitting here at my computer, thinking of all my readers, and the many missives I've sent their way, knowing many of you personally but many more only through this medium, I am given to reflect a little on the reality of life, living, and the tenuous nature of it all.
It is the eternal conundrum of endings and beginnings that confounds us with the passing of time. It is the reason Christmas is a time of joy but also of sorrow, as it is so easy to forget that joy and sorrow are different aspects of the same thing, as are endings and beginnings.
* * *
The "Bill" of which this note was coined is a giant of a man, physically, intellectually, and philosophically. He holds more than 100 patents reminiscent of Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the great mathematician, and has written three books that I doubt many of you have heard of much less read, but books nonetheless which were life changing experiences for me.
He has been a friend for moving on to two decades since we exchanged books in 1991. Ironies of ironies, I visited him in 1991 at his consultancy office high in the Twin Towers of New York City, and then at his home in Bayside, New York, where he invited a potpourri of very interesting people in the engineering, business and academic professions.
The book I exchanged with him was my WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS for his FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES, both diatribes on corpocracy.
* * *
As often is my wont, I attack a subject from offstage, and this is no exception. I write to Bill of my moral dilemma from the perspective of a profile of my sister, Pat. It is a Christmas and New Year reflection of one getting long in the tooth.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to each and every one of you, and may you always be well.
* * *
THE MISSIVE TO MY FRIEND, BILL:
Bill,
This past year has been a strange one, but what year isn't?
As my pragmatic sister says, "You're ahead of the game, Jimmy, if you outlive the year."
She and I were born on the same day two years apart, still working, still building her war chest and still pragmatic as ever.
She has never worried a minute of her life about the things I take so seriously, was an indifferent student in school, but loved to work since a little girl, and has more practical gumption than I'll ever have, doesn't read my stuff -- too long -- but doesn't criticize me for writing it.
She has always had her two feet planted firmly on the ground, never has given one thought to soaring, goes to bed early, rises equally early, uses a cell phone, but seldom watches television or reads a book.
She would be as happy on the Irish bog as was her grandmother, whom she resembles, and I'm telling you this, why?
I'm wondering now if such people as she have never needed course corrections in the history of society because they knew the way without knowing it.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and Carrie,
And may you always be well,
Sire
PS. Betty sends her love, too.
PSS The other two books of my friend are THE NEW PLAGUE, and HAVE FUN AT WORK.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 21, 2009
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Sitting here at my computer, thinking of all my readers, and the many missives I've sent their way, knowing many of you personally but many more only through this medium, I am given to reflect a little on the reality of life, living, and the tenuous nature of it all.
It is the eternal conundrum of endings and beginnings that confounds us with the passing of time. It is the reason Christmas is a time of joy but also of sorrow, as it is so easy to forget that joy and sorrow are different aspects of the same thing, as are endings and beginnings.
* * *
The "Bill" of which this note was coined is a giant of a man, physically, intellectually, and philosophically. He holds more than 100 patents reminiscent of Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the great mathematician, and has written three books that I doubt many of you have heard of much less read, but books nonetheless which were life changing experiences for me.
He has been a friend for moving on to two decades since we exchanged books in 1991. Ironies of ironies, I visited him in 1991 at his consultancy office high in the Twin Towers of New York City, and then at his home in Bayside, New York, where he invited a potpourri of very interesting people in the engineering, business and academic professions.
The book I exchanged with him was my WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS for his FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES, both diatribes on corpocracy.
* * *
As often is my wont, I attack a subject from offstage, and this is no exception. I write to Bill of my moral dilemma from the perspective of a profile of my sister, Pat. It is a Christmas and New Year reflection of one getting long in the tooth.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to each and every one of you, and may you always be well.
* * *
THE MISSIVE TO MY FRIEND, BILL:
Bill,
This past year has been a strange one, but what year isn't?
As my pragmatic sister says, "You're ahead of the game, Jimmy, if you outlive the year."
She and I were born on the same day two years apart, still working, still building her war chest and still pragmatic as ever.
She has never worried a minute of her life about the things I take so seriously, was an indifferent student in school, but loved to work since a little girl, and has more practical gumption than I'll ever have, doesn't read my stuff -- too long -- but doesn't criticize me for writing it.
She has always had her two feet planted firmly on the ground, never has given one thought to soaring, goes to bed early, rises equally early, uses a cell phone, but seldom watches television or reads a book.
She would be as happy on the Irish bog as was her grandmother, whom she resembles, and I'm telling you this, why?
I'm wondering now if such people as she have never needed course corrections in the history of society because they knew the way without knowing it.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and Carrie,
And may you always be well,
Sire
PS. Betty sends her love, too.
PSS The other two books of my friend are THE NEW PLAGUE, and HAVE FUN AT WORK.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
CONFIDENT SELLING and a Glimpse of Dr. Fisher's "OPEN LIBRARY"
CONFIDENT SELLING – AS IT APPEARS IN DR. FISHER’S “OPEN LIBRARY”
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© DECEMBER 20, 2009
REFERENCE:
People write and ask me how I got started writing. The short answer is that I’ve always been writing ever since a boy. The long answer is more complicated.
My first book was written while on assignment in South Africa for Nalco Chemical Company. It was called, "Sales Training & Technical Development" (1968), and was written for field engineers and salesmen in South Africa who lacked such a guide. I still hold the copyright.
When I returned to the states in 1969, a retired person in his thirties, I thought nothing would be easier than to become a writer. I acquired a national agent on the strength of some short fiction I wrote, but he was unable to place my work.
I then contacted the William Morris Literary Agency in New York City, explained my interest, and got a blistering reply from Mr. Morris. He claimed never before to have come across such a cockamamie request from somebody doing so well in the full flush of life, and wanting to give it all up for the uncertainty of being a writer. He said the writing samples I sent were promising but lacked commercial value.
Was I discouraged? No. Disappointed? Yes. If writing had been a job, I suppose I would have been discouraged, but writing was a vocation. A vocation is a journey and not an end. A vocation understands disappointments are part of the process.
So, I sat down in 1970 and turned out a manuscript in six weeks, called it "Let's Take the Worry Out of Selling," which was based in part on what I had written for the men in South Africa.
The manuscript was sent off to Prentice-Hall, Inc. without protocol. Within a month, it was accepted for publication without editing, and published as CONFIDENT SELLING in September 1970 with a 1971 copyright. Over the next twenty years, it sold roughly 100,000 copies with more than 20 printings.
CONFIDENT SELLING's incredible history is explained and what the book is about on "OPEN LIBRARY" (www.google.com) by typing in James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
CONFIDENT SELLING was printed in a monthly series in a national magazine, offered in shorter form in airline magazines, and was considered for an audiocassette and video version.
I mention the latter because the 11 o’clock television news anchor for Tampa’s ABC affiliate wanted to form a consortium around CONFIDENT SELLING to reach a wider audience. I told him Prentice-Hall held the copyright. P-H's demands proved excessive, so the project was dropped. I have never surrendered my copyright since. Trust me, an author has no rights of his own material once he gives up his copyright.
(Incidentally, I do have the copyright to this book and have had it since April 30, 1990 -- copyright registration number A 240727 -- as Prentice-Hall allowed it to lapse.)
* * *
Some of you wonder why I call the corporation “corpocracy,” or why I am so hard on the corporation. It is visceral as all my writings are based on my own experience. For example, I would not have received royalties for the serialized version of the CONFIDENT SELLING had I not seen my book on the cover at a magazine in a kiosk.
* * *
CONFIDENT SELLING'S CHALLENGE
If you're a sales person who's got what it takes to be the BEST, but you haven't proved yourself yet, or you have proved yourself, but you're finding it rough maintaining the tempo, here's a dynamic new confidence builder that helps you LEAP over the final hurdle TO SUCCESS TO CONTINUED SUCCESS! This book, your own private counselor, shows you HOW TO DEVELOP CONFIDENCE in your ability to sell. By the same token, it demonstrates WHY YOU SHOULD BE CONFIDENT. Here's the DOOR TO OPPORTUNITY -- self-reliance, self-esteem, not to mention self-discipline -- with YOU holding THE ONLY KEY to the biggest sale you will ever make, BELIEF IN YOURSELF!
* * *
FIRST SENTENCE OF CONFIDENT SELLING:
:
“This book is written for the person who has reached an impasse with him or herself.”
* * *
DESCRIPTION OF CONFIDENT SELLING
CONFIDENT SELLING is a breakthrough book in that it looks at the selling situation from the perspective of the seller, which it claims is the main obstacle in the selling situation. The assumptions the seller makes about the buyer, the buyer's interest in and ability to buy, are predicated too often on faulty information, information derived from the failure of the seller to sell him or herself on the cost benefit to the buyer to purchase the product or service.
CONFIDENT SELLING insists that selling is not a matter of intimidation or a matter of finessing the buyer into a mood to purchase the product or service being offered. On the contrary, CONFIDENT SELLING is about gauging the buyer's mood, readiness, need and ability to form a partnership with the seller. This requires the seller to think not as a seller but as a buyer, as the one that is to purchase the product or service and the consequences of such a transaction.
CONFIDENT SELLING argues that absolutely every endeavor in life is one between a seller and a buyer whether the seller is far removed from an actual selling situation of a product but is a doctor, lawyer, accountant, consultant, organizational administrator, priest, minister or rabbi, nun or teacher, factory worker, independent contractor or an employee of a public or private agency providing a service.
Selling, CONFIDENT SELLING, is saying is the noblest profession of all because it involves everyone in every pursuit every day.
* * *
The theme of CONFIDENT SELLING was elaborated with a new toolbox in the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992), which is available on-line or at your favorite bookstore.
OF SPECIAL NOTE
Of Dr. Fisher's nine published books, two have been considered "breakthrough" books because they have defied conventional wisdom.
WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A View from the Trenches (1990) signaled the moving away from the manager-employee algorithm to an emphasis on the emergence of the new workforce of professional workers. Dr. Fisher argued that workers were managed, motivzated, manipulated and mobilized as if predominantly blue-collar when they were predominantly white-collar or professional. Now, twenty years later, and more relevant than ever, tradition still treats workers as if knowledge is the domain of managers when it is now primarily the domain of professionals. Knowledge is power, and workers have the power, but still behave as it they don't. Read about WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS in the "Open Library."
CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) is a breaktrhough book in that it sees the selling problem the reverse of how it is traditionally viewed. The claim here is that the obstacle to success in selling of anything by anyone in any profession is not that of the buyer, but the seller. Check CSFT90s in the "Open Library."
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© DECEMBER 20, 2009
REFERENCE:
People write and ask me how I got started writing. The short answer is that I’ve always been writing ever since a boy. The long answer is more complicated.
My first book was written while on assignment in South Africa for Nalco Chemical Company. It was called, "Sales Training & Technical Development" (1968), and was written for field engineers and salesmen in South Africa who lacked such a guide. I still hold the copyright.
When I returned to the states in 1969, a retired person in his thirties, I thought nothing would be easier than to become a writer. I acquired a national agent on the strength of some short fiction I wrote, but he was unable to place my work.
I then contacted the William Morris Literary Agency in New York City, explained my interest, and got a blistering reply from Mr. Morris. He claimed never before to have come across such a cockamamie request from somebody doing so well in the full flush of life, and wanting to give it all up for the uncertainty of being a writer. He said the writing samples I sent were promising but lacked commercial value.
Was I discouraged? No. Disappointed? Yes. If writing had been a job, I suppose I would have been discouraged, but writing was a vocation. A vocation is a journey and not an end. A vocation understands disappointments are part of the process.
So, I sat down in 1970 and turned out a manuscript in six weeks, called it "Let's Take the Worry Out of Selling," which was based in part on what I had written for the men in South Africa.
The manuscript was sent off to Prentice-Hall, Inc. without protocol. Within a month, it was accepted for publication without editing, and published as CONFIDENT SELLING in September 1970 with a 1971 copyright. Over the next twenty years, it sold roughly 100,000 copies with more than 20 printings.
CONFIDENT SELLING's incredible history is explained and what the book is about on "OPEN LIBRARY" (www.google.com) by typing in James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
CONFIDENT SELLING was printed in a monthly series in a national magazine, offered in shorter form in airline magazines, and was considered for an audiocassette and video version.
I mention the latter because the 11 o’clock television news anchor for Tampa’s ABC affiliate wanted to form a consortium around CONFIDENT SELLING to reach a wider audience. I told him Prentice-Hall held the copyright. P-H's demands proved excessive, so the project was dropped. I have never surrendered my copyright since. Trust me, an author has no rights of his own material once he gives up his copyright.
(Incidentally, I do have the copyright to this book and have had it since April 30, 1990 -- copyright registration number A 240727 -- as Prentice-Hall allowed it to lapse.)
* * *
Some of you wonder why I call the corporation “corpocracy,” or why I am so hard on the corporation. It is visceral as all my writings are based on my own experience. For example, I would not have received royalties for the serialized version of the CONFIDENT SELLING had I not seen my book on the cover at a magazine in a kiosk.
* * *
CONFIDENT SELLING'S CHALLENGE
If you're a sales person who's got what it takes to be the BEST, but you haven't proved yourself yet, or you have proved yourself, but you're finding it rough maintaining the tempo, here's a dynamic new confidence builder that helps you LEAP over the final hurdle TO SUCCESS TO CONTINUED SUCCESS! This book, your own private counselor, shows you HOW TO DEVELOP CONFIDENCE in your ability to sell. By the same token, it demonstrates WHY YOU SHOULD BE CONFIDENT. Here's the DOOR TO OPPORTUNITY -- self-reliance, self-esteem, not to mention self-discipline -- with YOU holding THE ONLY KEY to the biggest sale you will ever make, BELIEF IN YOURSELF!
* * *
FIRST SENTENCE OF CONFIDENT SELLING:
:
“This book is written for the person who has reached an impasse with him or herself.”
* * *
DESCRIPTION OF CONFIDENT SELLING
CONFIDENT SELLING is a breakthrough book in that it looks at the selling situation from the perspective of the seller, which it claims is the main obstacle in the selling situation. The assumptions the seller makes about the buyer, the buyer's interest in and ability to buy, are predicated too often on faulty information, information derived from the failure of the seller to sell him or herself on the cost benefit to the buyer to purchase the product or service.
CONFIDENT SELLING insists that selling is not a matter of intimidation or a matter of finessing the buyer into a mood to purchase the product or service being offered. On the contrary, CONFIDENT SELLING is about gauging the buyer's mood, readiness, need and ability to form a partnership with the seller. This requires the seller to think not as a seller but as a buyer, as the one that is to purchase the product or service and the consequences of such a transaction.
CONFIDENT SELLING argues that absolutely every endeavor in life is one between a seller and a buyer whether the seller is far removed from an actual selling situation of a product but is a doctor, lawyer, accountant, consultant, organizational administrator, priest, minister or rabbi, nun or teacher, factory worker, independent contractor or an employee of a public or private agency providing a service.
Selling, CONFIDENT SELLING, is saying is the noblest profession of all because it involves everyone in every pursuit every day.
* * *
The theme of CONFIDENT SELLING was elaborated with a new toolbox in the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992), which is available on-line or at your favorite bookstore.
OF SPECIAL NOTE
Of Dr. Fisher's nine published books, two have been considered "breakthrough" books because they have defied conventional wisdom.
WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A View from the Trenches (1990) signaled the moving away from the manager-employee algorithm to an emphasis on the emergence of the new workforce of professional workers. Dr. Fisher argued that workers were managed, motivzated, manipulated and mobilized as if predominantly blue-collar when they were predominantly white-collar or professional. Now, twenty years later, and more relevant than ever, tradition still treats workers as if knowledge is the domain of managers when it is now primarily the domain of professionals. Knowledge is power, and workers have the power, but still behave as it they don't. Read about WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS in the "Open Library."
CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) is a breaktrhough book in that it sees the selling problem the reverse of how it is traditionally viewed. The claim here is that the obstacle to success in selling of anything by anyone in any profession is not that of the buyer, but the seller. Check CSFT90s in the "Open Library."
* * *
Friday, December 18, 2009
THE IMPORTANCE OF EVERYONE! A PLUMBER, ELECTRICIAN AND DR. STEINMETZ!
THE IMPORTANCE OF EVERYONE – A PLUMBER, ELECTRICIAN AND DR. STEINMETZ!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 18, 2009
Over the weekend, our electrical heating and air conditioning system went out. At the same time, our hot water heater went on the blink. We were experiencing a mild cold wave in Florida and were not used to being unable to take a shower, use our electrical dishwasher or even to wash our hands in hot water.
Not being handy, we have what is called “Home Shield,” which provides such services at a hefty quarterly cost, which we have been paying for nearly twenty-two years, or since we returned from Europe and made this our home.
There are two things I have learned:
(1) The things that I can do well, and
(2) The things that I cannot do at all.
In my long life, I’ve never crossed that barrier so I have saved myself the embarrassment of having to pay for the damages I caused because I tried to do something myself of which I lacked the expertise.
So, today I had an electrician and a plumber come to my house, sort out my problems and with due diligence enjoy watching them solve them with panache.
The electrician had only to check the reset button in the air conditioner, and voila, heat and cool air were back.
The plumber had only to drain the water heater and replace the heating coil, and voila, hot water returned.
* * *
The speed, agility and modesty with which these two men did their jobs reminded me of a personal favorite of mine, the irascible and cocky German-American mathematician and electrical engineer, Charles Proteus Steinmetz (April 9., 1865 – October 26, 1923), who one day found himself consulting for General Electric.
The system electrical generators were down and GE was losing money, and quickly brought Steinmetz in to solve the problem.
He examined the machines, checked them with his instruments, and then asked for a rubber hammer. He gently ran his hand over the steel skin of the cylinder, marked it with a chalk, and then gave it a single blow at that spot. The system came alive the generators kicked in and operations resumed.
* * *
Later, the Director of Operations received a consulting fee from Dr. Steinmetz for $10,000. The director contacted the consultant and said, “Your fee of $10,000 seems extravagant. Five people have to sign off on this type of request and so I will need an itemized bill describing your services.” Dr. Steinmetz said that would be no problem. Here was the itemization of his charges:
$1.00 for hitting the system with a hammer.
$9,999.00 for knowing where to place the blow.
This was reported a number of years ago in The Reader’s Digest. Steinmetz, who had more than 200 patents to his name, suffered the ignominy of dwarfism and being a hunchback. He made his mind that of a super cerebral athlete. Indeed, much of General Electric’s rise to prominence is accredited to Dr. Steinmetz's inventions in the area of artificial lighting.
* * *
I told this story to the electrician and the plumber citing how important they were in their special knowledge, as Steinmetz was with his. We need electrical engineers, but we also need plumbers and electricians as well, and none more than the other, but all equally the same.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 18, 2009
Over the weekend, our electrical heating and air conditioning system went out. At the same time, our hot water heater went on the blink. We were experiencing a mild cold wave in Florida and were not used to being unable to take a shower, use our electrical dishwasher or even to wash our hands in hot water.
Not being handy, we have what is called “Home Shield,” which provides such services at a hefty quarterly cost, which we have been paying for nearly twenty-two years, or since we returned from Europe and made this our home.
There are two things I have learned:
(1) The things that I can do well, and
(2) The things that I cannot do at all.
In my long life, I’ve never crossed that barrier so I have saved myself the embarrassment of having to pay for the damages I caused because I tried to do something myself of which I lacked the expertise.
So, today I had an electrician and a plumber come to my house, sort out my problems and with due diligence enjoy watching them solve them with panache.
The electrician had only to check the reset button in the air conditioner, and voila, heat and cool air were back.
The plumber had only to drain the water heater and replace the heating coil, and voila, hot water returned.
* * *
The speed, agility and modesty with which these two men did their jobs reminded me of a personal favorite of mine, the irascible and cocky German-American mathematician and electrical engineer, Charles Proteus Steinmetz (April 9., 1865 – October 26, 1923), who one day found himself consulting for General Electric.
The system electrical generators were down and GE was losing money, and quickly brought Steinmetz in to solve the problem.
He examined the machines, checked them with his instruments, and then asked for a rubber hammer. He gently ran his hand over the steel skin of the cylinder, marked it with a chalk, and then gave it a single blow at that spot. The system came alive the generators kicked in and operations resumed.
* * *
Later, the Director of Operations received a consulting fee from Dr. Steinmetz for $10,000. The director contacted the consultant and said, “Your fee of $10,000 seems extravagant. Five people have to sign off on this type of request and so I will need an itemized bill describing your services.” Dr. Steinmetz said that would be no problem. Here was the itemization of his charges:
$1.00 for hitting the system with a hammer.
$9,999.00 for knowing where to place the blow.
This was reported a number of years ago in The Reader’s Digest. Steinmetz, who had more than 200 patents to his name, suffered the ignominy of dwarfism and being a hunchback. He made his mind that of a super cerebral athlete. Indeed, much of General Electric’s rise to prominence is accredited to Dr. Steinmetz's inventions in the area of artificial lighting.
* * *
I told this story to the electrician and the plumber citing how important they were in their special knowledge, as Steinmetz was with his. We need electrical engineers, but we also need plumbers and electricians as well, and none more than the other, but all equally the same.
* * *
Monday, December 14, 2009
READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!
READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 14, 2009
REFERENCE:
A person I do not know and have never met but grew up in my hometown IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE has written a warm and moving letter about my book with that title.
The book was written as a snapshot of a time now long past in the middle of the twentieth century in the middle of the United States and in the middle of this sleepy community, Clinton, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River, where young people grew up around the centrally located courthouse.
Like many other small communities across America, there was no television, no mega sports, no big automobiles, no manicured lawns because the nation was at war and there was rationing and victory gardens instead of lawns.
There was radio, movies, high school sports, in the case of Clinton, there was the Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it. People drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode their bicycles to work.
It was a time when the four faces of the magnificent Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour throwing a metaphorical shadow over young people’s lives. This made certain that they would have no excuse for being late for meals prepared from victory garden staples by their mothers.
This community wasn’t the exception but the rule in that most stay-at-home mothers were homemakers in two-parent families. Few parents in this neighborhood managed to get beyond grammar school, and nearly all of the men worked in Clinton factories or the gigantic railroad yards, or on the trains from Clinton to Boone, Iowa, as this was a factory-railroad town. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language.
It was a time in hot weather that people slept with their families at Riverview Park, left windows open and doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house without locking chains. If they had an automobile, it was at the curb with keys in the ignition, knowing neither neighbor nor stranger would disturb their possessions. In winter, schools never closed even when snow banks were four feet high.
Idyllic? Perhaps. Accurate? Probably not. But it is the way it is remembered nearly sixty years later.
* * *
A READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!
Dear Dr. Fisher:
RE: In the Shadow of the Courthouse
I wanted to write to you and make a few comments on your book, In the Shadow of the Courthouse. I can't begin to tell you how much I have enjoyed reading your reminiscences of growing up in Clinton and, more specifically, "In the shadow of the courthouse."
I was born in 1947 and lived at 220 1st Avenue for the first twenty-one years of my life. My father was the first baby baptized in the "new" St. Patrick's church in 1905 and was a mail carrier for over twenty years on a route that bordered the courthouse area.
When not playing ball, or skating at the Sheriff's office during the winter, I worked for Gordon Goetzle at Gordy's Standard Service across the street from the ball field. The names I remember such as Jakubsen, Cavanaugh, Witt, and many others are all a part of my history, although it came about a few years after yours. I clearly remember Gus Witt skating during the winter at the Sheriff's office and at Kahler's Marina and, as a matter of fact, I have found out that Gus still resides in the area in Camanche.
I was one of the first group of young men admitted to Mt. St. Clare and I'm proud to say that I was one of the fortunate Clinton guys to marry a "Mountie," we've been married 38 years and live in St. Louis.
I still keep in touch with the nuns from Mt. St. Clare and visited with them just recently at the Centicle. Tom McEleney was the best man in my wedding and I maintain contact with numerous other friends, especially with the advent of Facebook.
My real purpose in writing to you was to express my gratitude for your accomplishment in capturing what it was like to grow up in Clinton, no matter the time period, and how, although you may physically leave the city, you never can get it out of your mind.
I enjoyed every page and had great difficulty putting the book down. Incidentally, Howard Judd was my swimming coach for five years in high school, I swam varsity for him and the River Kings when I was a freshman and lifeguard at the pool during the summer working for Mrs. Judd (Elsie) and Howard.
Sincerely,
Steve W. Hoosack
Ballwin, MO
PS: If interested in your own copy of this book, contact www.authorhouse.com.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 14, 2009
REFERENCE:
A person I do not know and have never met but grew up in my hometown IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE has written a warm and moving letter about my book with that title.
The book was written as a snapshot of a time now long past in the middle of the twentieth century in the middle of the United States and in the middle of this sleepy community, Clinton, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River, where young people grew up around the centrally located courthouse.
Like many other small communities across America, there was no television, no mega sports, no big automobiles, no manicured lawns because the nation was at war and there was rationing and victory gardens instead of lawns.
There was radio, movies, high school sports, in the case of Clinton, there was the Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it. People drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode their bicycles to work.
It was a time when the four faces of the magnificent Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour throwing a metaphorical shadow over young people’s lives. This made certain that they would have no excuse for being late for meals prepared from victory garden staples by their mothers.
This community wasn’t the exception but the rule in that most stay-at-home mothers were homemakers in two-parent families. Few parents in this neighborhood managed to get beyond grammar school, and nearly all of the men worked in Clinton factories or the gigantic railroad yards, or on the trains from Clinton to Boone, Iowa, as this was a factory-railroad town. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language.
It was a time in hot weather that people slept with their families at Riverview Park, left windows open and doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house without locking chains. If they had an automobile, it was at the curb with keys in the ignition, knowing neither neighbor nor stranger would disturb their possessions. In winter, schools never closed even when snow banks were four feet high.
Idyllic? Perhaps. Accurate? Probably not. But it is the way it is remembered nearly sixty years later.
* * *
A READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!
Dear Dr. Fisher:
RE: In the Shadow of the Courthouse
I wanted to write to you and make a few comments on your book, In the Shadow of the Courthouse. I can't begin to tell you how much I have enjoyed reading your reminiscences of growing up in Clinton and, more specifically, "In the shadow of the courthouse."
I was born in 1947 and lived at 220 1st Avenue for the first twenty-one years of my life. My father was the first baby baptized in the "new" St. Patrick's church in 1905 and was a mail carrier for over twenty years on a route that bordered the courthouse area.
When not playing ball, or skating at the Sheriff's office during the winter, I worked for Gordon Goetzle at Gordy's Standard Service across the street from the ball field. The names I remember such as Jakubsen, Cavanaugh, Witt, and many others are all a part of my history, although it came about a few years after yours. I clearly remember Gus Witt skating during the winter at the Sheriff's office and at Kahler's Marina and, as a matter of fact, I have found out that Gus still resides in the area in Camanche.
I was one of the first group of young men admitted to Mt. St. Clare and I'm proud to say that I was one of the fortunate Clinton guys to marry a "Mountie," we've been married 38 years and live in St. Louis.
I still keep in touch with the nuns from Mt. St. Clare and visited with them just recently at the Centicle. Tom McEleney was the best man in my wedding and I maintain contact with numerous other friends, especially with the advent of Facebook.
My real purpose in writing to you was to express my gratitude for your accomplishment in capturing what it was like to grow up in Clinton, no matter the time period, and how, although you may physically leave the city, you never can get it out of your mind.
I enjoyed every page and had great difficulty putting the book down. Incidentally, Howard Judd was my swimming coach for five years in high school, I swam varsity for him and the River Kings when I was a freshman and lifeguard at the pool during the summer working for Mrs. Judd (Elsie) and Howard.
Sincerely,
Steve W. Hoosack
Ballwin, MO
PS: If interested in your own copy of this book, contact www.authorhouse.com.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
THE AXEMATKER'S GIFT -- THE DOUBLE-EDGED BLADE OF COMMUNITY HISTORY!
THE AXEMAKER’S GIFT – THE DOUBLE-EDGED BLADE OF COMMUNITY HISTORY
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 13, 2009
We Americans may wax nostalgic but we have no commitment to the past. We treat the present as the future and ride change as a meteor to oblivion.
We cut away the way it was to a new reality, a reality that we believe finds us gaining something desired but at the expense of something lost forever, and for which we can only pine away in our dreams for it shall never return.
When there is no permanence, no central core to existence, there is no attachment, nothing is sacred, everything is expendable like worn out shoes and old clothes. We have no roots. We become a homeless mind.
* * *
I grew up in a sleepy Iowa town on the Mississippi River called Clinton, Iowa. It was a time when most of us were too poor, and our parents too worn out from suffering through the Great Depression to consider the “cut and control” consequences of change, that is, from “what is” from “what was.” Although tired and weary, they had values, beliefs, and solid faith in a just God.
All changed when they were waken from their lethargy with World War Two.
Clinton, that sleepy town on the river, was also an industrial town with many factories producing sugar from corn, buttons for clothes, seeds for flowers and other plants, garments, candy, alcohol, feed for cattle, packaged chickens, wire shelves for homes, steel tubes for sundry uses, window, sashes and doors for homes, cellophane for industry and homemakers, beams for bridges, and fresh bread baked daily by a national firm.
Overnight, Clinton became a military/industrial complex, and an important contributor to the war effort as well as sending many of its sons and daughters to military service to fight and serve across the globe.
* * *
Clinton, at the time, had more than twenty Protestant churches, five Catholic churches, and a bustling business district on Fifth Avenue South at the South End, and on Main Street at the North End. It had five parochial grammar schools and twelve public grammar schools, two public high schools, and one Catholic high school. It also had boarding schools for girls at Mount St. Clare Academy, High School and Junior College and our Lady of Angels Academy and High School. It had the magnificent Riverview Stadium and River Front Park, Root Park, Chancy Park, and many smaller parks including two picturesque parks downtown. It had the “Big Tree” that separated the North End, or Lyons from the South End, or Clinton. It had the natural umbrella of gigantic elm trees that stretched from Fifth Avenue South and Fourth Street to Bluff Boulevard. The bluff was a winding road cut from the limestone hills that abutted it with eloquent homes on its crest.
At Christmas Time, the Iten mansion would be decked out in thousands of Christmas lights with every Christmas theme imaginable rising from the bluff to the heights of the home.
The Clinton Herald was the main organ of communication of this sleepy town of 33,000, and it did its best to bring Christmas and Season’s cheer to the community with colorful and thoughtful themes throughout the holidays. KROS (Keep Right On Smiling) was the community radio station, broadcasting news, but most particularly, the athletic contests of Clinton high school teams.
And then there was the Clinton Country Club on Fourteenth Street sprawling for acres with a carefully maintained 18-hole golf course, clubhouse and meeting place for the movers and shakers of the community.
* * *
More than 100 years ago, an Irish priest came to this sleepy town on the river and created St. Patrick’s Church, Rectory and School. I attended grammar school there, and it became the roots from which everything else has sprung. The good priest also created a hospital, Mercy, a home for nuns and young girls, Mount St. Clare, a home for the aged, Mount Alverno, and was an influence in having the Davenport Diocese purchase property of an anti-Catholic organization that became Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, and Grammar School.
One hundred years ago, a series of movers and shakers started to settle in Clinton. They would starts businesses, create jobs, and build school, churches, and a solid infrastructure. They were builders of permanence, one commissioning a world famous architect to build a department store. They also built an opera house and theatre for the legitimate stage. A world famous actress and clown grew out of Clinton’s soil.
And at mid-century, because many of these booming manufacturing operations hired poor Clinton kids to work in their factories during the summer, Clinton has contributed skilled minds across the United States to become movers and shakers in their own right.
* * *
But alas, the past is dead, the present tainted, and the future left up for grabs. There are no longer five Catholic parishes but one. There are no longer twenty Protestant congregations but half that number and many of them are struggling mightily today to stay operational. Mount St. Clare and the Lady’s of Angels are penny postcards of history no longer visible in the firmament. .
The company that converted corn into sugar, and was responsible for my getting a college education by employing me for five summers, is no longer a Clinton operation, but part of an international mega-corporation.
This mega-corporation has swallowed up the neighborhood of my birth, South Clinton. It no longer exists replaced by silos and hoppers, railroad tracks and loading docks.
The beautiful buildings of downtown Clinton, especially the one designed by the great architect, is now a HUD casualty. Other prominent downtown buildings have even faired less well as Fifth Avenue limps forward no longer the showcase it once was, when it bustled with droves of shoppers on a weekend. Discount stores on Camanche Avenue South on the periphery of Clinton provide staples while most Clintians visit the Quad Cities 38 miles away of a weekend for major purchases, or they gamble away their limited funds at the new Mecca, the lavish casino in the same Camanche Avenue neighborhood.
There is only one jewel left, a reminder of yesterday, a place called “Guzzardos,” a gift and bookshop. This warm and personal little shop keeps the tradition alive of picture book Clinton, stubbornly resisting change. It has also become a home for Clinton authors who return with books they have written.
The Clinton Herald, like newspapers across the country, struggles to stay in print, and is no long a Clinton paper, but a Clinton County organ, and KROS has been reduced to an AM-radio station.
Second Street, the seven-mile street connecting the North to the South is penciled with fast-food restaurants as is the case with many other small towns across America. Clinton High, which was once architecturally a beautiful campus, a landmark soft on the eyes, now looks more like a fortress than an open campus of learning.
Riverview Stadium and River Front Park, however, have been modernized, and a dike built from one end of the town to the other to prevent the raging spring waters of the Mississippi from drowning adjacent property. There are always pluses with the negatives, and this is a definite positive.
I’m not so sure the demise of the Clinton Country Club is a positive even if it is to allow expansion of the on-line university, Ashford University, an educational institution that has already erased Franciscan University, which had replaced Mount St. Clare Academy, High School, and College from the community. It may prove to be, but it worries me, at what expense?
* * *
All I do know is the “cut and control” phenomenon has become a cultural reality to this day. We take pride in progress as our most important product refusing or unable to see what we get for the progress compared to what we give up. What we give up never returns. That is a given.
Once you make the cut, you cannot mend the damage. You cut a highway through rich farmland; you cannot restore that land to productive crops. It is lost forever.
I wrote a book in 2004, NEAR JOURNEY’S END? CAN PLANET EARTH SURVIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN? It was never published. We don’t like to think about the unthinkable. We just move through the queue like cattle to the slaughter until it is too late, and so it has been for the past 12,000 years since we moved from hunters and gatherers, taking only what we needed to survive, to agriculture and forming communities and hierarchies, developing better tools, exploiting the land, mushrooming in population . . . from past imperfect, to present ridiculous to future perfect where we believe we have answers to everything with the new god of science.
* * *
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 13, 2009
We Americans may wax nostalgic but we have no commitment to the past. We treat the present as the future and ride change as a meteor to oblivion.
We cut away the way it was to a new reality, a reality that we believe finds us gaining something desired but at the expense of something lost forever, and for which we can only pine away in our dreams for it shall never return.
When there is no permanence, no central core to existence, there is no attachment, nothing is sacred, everything is expendable like worn out shoes and old clothes. We have no roots. We become a homeless mind.
* * *
I grew up in a sleepy Iowa town on the Mississippi River called Clinton, Iowa. It was a time when most of us were too poor, and our parents too worn out from suffering through the Great Depression to consider the “cut and control” consequences of change, that is, from “what is” from “what was.” Although tired and weary, they had values, beliefs, and solid faith in a just God.
All changed when they were waken from their lethargy with World War Two.
Clinton, that sleepy town on the river, was also an industrial town with many factories producing sugar from corn, buttons for clothes, seeds for flowers and other plants, garments, candy, alcohol, feed for cattle, packaged chickens, wire shelves for homes, steel tubes for sundry uses, window, sashes and doors for homes, cellophane for industry and homemakers, beams for bridges, and fresh bread baked daily by a national firm.
Overnight, Clinton became a military/industrial complex, and an important contributor to the war effort as well as sending many of its sons and daughters to military service to fight and serve across the globe.
* * *
Clinton, at the time, had more than twenty Protestant churches, five Catholic churches, and a bustling business district on Fifth Avenue South at the South End, and on Main Street at the North End. It had five parochial grammar schools and twelve public grammar schools, two public high schools, and one Catholic high school. It also had boarding schools for girls at Mount St. Clare Academy, High School and Junior College and our Lady of Angels Academy and High School. It had the magnificent Riverview Stadium and River Front Park, Root Park, Chancy Park, and many smaller parks including two picturesque parks downtown. It had the “Big Tree” that separated the North End, or Lyons from the South End, or Clinton. It had the natural umbrella of gigantic elm trees that stretched from Fifth Avenue South and Fourth Street to Bluff Boulevard. The bluff was a winding road cut from the limestone hills that abutted it with eloquent homes on its crest.
At Christmas Time, the Iten mansion would be decked out in thousands of Christmas lights with every Christmas theme imaginable rising from the bluff to the heights of the home.
The Clinton Herald was the main organ of communication of this sleepy town of 33,000, and it did its best to bring Christmas and Season’s cheer to the community with colorful and thoughtful themes throughout the holidays. KROS (Keep Right On Smiling) was the community radio station, broadcasting news, but most particularly, the athletic contests of Clinton high school teams.
And then there was the Clinton Country Club on Fourteenth Street sprawling for acres with a carefully maintained 18-hole golf course, clubhouse and meeting place for the movers and shakers of the community.
* * *
More than 100 years ago, an Irish priest came to this sleepy town on the river and created St. Patrick’s Church, Rectory and School. I attended grammar school there, and it became the roots from which everything else has sprung. The good priest also created a hospital, Mercy, a home for nuns and young girls, Mount St. Clare, a home for the aged, Mount Alverno, and was an influence in having the Davenport Diocese purchase property of an anti-Catholic organization that became Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, and Grammar School.
One hundred years ago, a series of movers and shakers started to settle in Clinton. They would starts businesses, create jobs, and build school, churches, and a solid infrastructure. They were builders of permanence, one commissioning a world famous architect to build a department store. They also built an opera house and theatre for the legitimate stage. A world famous actress and clown grew out of Clinton’s soil.
And at mid-century, because many of these booming manufacturing operations hired poor Clinton kids to work in their factories during the summer, Clinton has contributed skilled minds across the United States to become movers and shakers in their own right.
* * *
But alas, the past is dead, the present tainted, and the future left up for grabs. There are no longer five Catholic parishes but one. There are no longer twenty Protestant congregations but half that number and many of them are struggling mightily today to stay operational. Mount St. Clare and the Lady’s of Angels are penny postcards of history no longer visible in the firmament. .
The company that converted corn into sugar, and was responsible for my getting a college education by employing me for five summers, is no longer a Clinton operation, but part of an international mega-corporation.
This mega-corporation has swallowed up the neighborhood of my birth, South Clinton. It no longer exists replaced by silos and hoppers, railroad tracks and loading docks.
The beautiful buildings of downtown Clinton, especially the one designed by the great architect, is now a HUD casualty. Other prominent downtown buildings have even faired less well as Fifth Avenue limps forward no longer the showcase it once was, when it bustled with droves of shoppers on a weekend. Discount stores on Camanche Avenue South on the periphery of Clinton provide staples while most Clintians visit the Quad Cities 38 miles away of a weekend for major purchases, or they gamble away their limited funds at the new Mecca, the lavish casino in the same Camanche Avenue neighborhood.
There is only one jewel left, a reminder of yesterday, a place called “Guzzardos,” a gift and bookshop. This warm and personal little shop keeps the tradition alive of picture book Clinton, stubbornly resisting change. It has also become a home for Clinton authors who return with books they have written.
The Clinton Herald, like newspapers across the country, struggles to stay in print, and is no long a Clinton paper, but a Clinton County organ, and KROS has been reduced to an AM-radio station.
Second Street, the seven-mile street connecting the North to the South is penciled with fast-food restaurants as is the case with many other small towns across America. Clinton High, which was once architecturally a beautiful campus, a landmark soft on the eyes, now looks more like a fortress than an open campus of learning.
Riverview Stadium and River Front Park, however, have been modernized, and a dike built from one end of the town to the other to prevent the raging spring waters of the Mississippi from drowning adjacent property. There are always pluses with the negatives, and this is a definite positive.
I’m not so sure the demise of the Clinton Country Club is a positive even if it is to allow expansion of the on-line university, Ashford University, an educational institution that has already erased Franciscan University, which had replaced Mount St. Clare Academy, High School, and College from the community. It may prove to be, but it worries me, at what expense?
* * *
All I do know is the “cut and control” phenomenon has become a cultural reality to this day. We take pride in progress as our most important product refusing or unable to see what we get for the progress compared to what we give up. What we give up never returns. That is a given.
Once you make the cut, you cannot mend the damage. You cut a highway through rich farmland; you cannot restore that land to productive crops. It is lost forever.
I wrote a book in 2004, NEAR JOURNEY’S END? CAN PLANET EARTH SURVIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN? It was never published. We don’t like to think about the unthinkable. We just move through the queue like cattle to the slaughter until it is too late, and so it has been for the past 12,000 years since we moved from hunters and gatherers, taking only what we needed to survive, to agriculture and forming communities and hierarchies, developing better tools, exploiting the land, mushrooming in population . . . from past imperfect, to present ridiculous to future perfect where we believe we have answers to everything with the new god of science.
* * *
Friday, December 11, 2009
THE SILENT MAN IN THE PEW SPEAKS OUT!
The Silent Man in the Pew Speaks Out
A Plebian View of the Roman Catholic Church in Decline
PART ONE
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC LAITY IN SEARCH OF ITS CHURCH
James R. Fisher, Jr.
Written in 1968
© November 2005
___________________________________________________
NOTE: This was never published. It was written just before I took on a life changing assignment. Only in my 30s, I was being sent to South Africa to facilitate the merger of our South African subsidiary with a British affiliate and a South African chemical company.
This essay was written only days before going to South Africa. The Church was in turmoil trying to assimilate the tenets of Vatican I and II, while the US was in chaos over saber rattling in Viet Nam. The disenfranchised generation of American youth born to baby boomer parents was now eligible for the draft. My generation went into the military without protest, but this generation was inclined to burn their draft cards or escape to Canada. I was leaving this all behind to take on the South African assignment. It was early April 1968.
A devout Catholic, I would emerge from this experience a different man. I went into Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and came out of it aware of the darkness in my own heart. I am now writing a novel of that experience.
Religion was one of my anchors as a youth, and I would imagine if I were a Jew I would have been considered orthodox. Garry Wills wrote a book in 2002 titled “Why I Am A Catholic.” I found the title amusing.
Roman Catholic indoctrination is so strong that if you receive it while very young there is little chance you can ever escape it no matter what games you play with your mind. I came to South Africa sure of my faith and my identity, and left in search of the real parents of my soul.
I make no apologies for the sophomoric style of this essay. Recording it now, unchanged, for the record, I see that I was a Catholic writer before publishing my first essay or book, and I think it is fair to say, after eight books and more than 350 published essays to date, I remain true to that identity.
My novel, which is to be titled “Green Island in a Black Seas,” relates to my struggle with South African Apartheid, my company’s duplicity, my Irish Roman Catholic faith, my marriage vows, my wife and four children, and a life that brought to the fore one word to describe everything: betrayal.
Writing has provided sanctuary and retreat from confusion. Writing has made me aware you don’t have to be published to be a writer. You just have to make connection with yourself by connecting the letters of the alphabet. It is published here as an invitation to readers to ponder their own situation.
Note recorded this date: November 20, 2005
____________________________________________________________________
To a casual observer, it would seem that the Roman Catholic Church has always taken itself seriously. With an air of omniscience, it has conducted affairs of the Catholic world in a somewhat unapproachable, even unimpeachable hauteur. Wasn’t the Church man’s only means to eternal salvation?
Not long ago, this question would have been considered academic, in fact absurd, in the eyes of the average Catholic. Ecclesiastical thinking and activity had not trickled down to his level. This was not surprising. He had become conditioned to being spoon fed a definitive, catechetical approach to religious education. A comprehensive and conceptual understanding of the Church, her theology, philosophy, and history was not promulgated to the general laity.
The reason for this was quite simple. An authoritarian and paternal Church hierarchy did not feel it was needed. That is why the present remedial and ameliorating steps being simultaneously considered and implemented have been found both stultifying and confusing to many on both sides of the altar.
Church history indicates that this current situation is actually following precedence. Crises in the Church have invariably been followed by Vatican Councils, which in turn have led to new doctrines and dogma. The present contingency is similar to its historic predecessor but yet different. It differs in scope, mood, and ambition. A very real threat that mid-twentieth century man will finally reject Christianity has put the Church in a most conciliatory frame of mind. Worthy and necessary as Christian unity may be, there exists cold realities, which must be faced.
Catholicism has instilled beliefs, attitudes, habits, and practices with which only Catholics have been identified. Much of this has been somewhat symbolic, like not eating meat on Friday. Nevertheless, these are real and fixed in the minds and hearts of many who call themselves, “Catholic.” Such a preconditioned laity may attract obfuscation and conflict instead of harmony and a spirit of ecumenicism if they do not see Church history and thought in true perspective, as well as understand what is taking place today. The man in the pew must identify with the Church in transition, or all is for naught.
Born more than thirty years ago a congenial member of the Roman Catholic Church, this observer has no claim to authority. However, raised and inculcated in Catholicism in the traditional fashion has produced its effects and memories. For example, a dependence on dogma and doctrine is remembered instead of the beauty of Christianity. Even after reason prevailed, these tenets have merged and submerged, often obliterating rational clarity.
That is why an issue like birth control languishes in the mind of the Catholic, waiting, desperately waiting for Church sanction, even though logic and reason has already bombarded his mind with the answer.
Consequently, it is quite typical for the average Catholic to accept trauma, doubt, confusion, thought, and education as the natural progression to truth, understanding, and meaning as he is able to glean it.
This experience is necessarily private and usually committed to silence. But the times dictate that this must change. It is not the individual but the entire Church, which is now going through a painful reappraisal. Ultimately, it will be the cataclysm of all Catholic and Christian thought and interpretation, which will prove the destiny of this FAITH, and its relevance to this time.
Seldom does the man in the pew, the true plebian, express his will. This must not be. Perhaps one plebian view may encourage many others to unshackle their minds from wondering in silence about their world and their fate. Their responsibility to contribute to the dialogue has been obviated by history.
Three centuries after Christ’s death this did not seem so certain. The Church faced a great test. A Greek monk named Arius was preaching a doctrine that Christ was the Son of God, but neither consubstantial nor coeternal with the Father. This doctrine called Arianism was the reason for the Council of Nicaea. Here the Church solemnly proclaimed her belief in “ . . .one Lord, Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, born of the Father before all time, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, the same in Being with the Father (consubstantial) . . .”
Today we know this as the Nicene Creed, which has become a touchstone of sound orthodoxy and Church unity.
A period of grace, power, and growth followed for the Church, only to be tainted by the spoils of such good fortune. It was Middle Age. Simony in the papacy and the episcopacy; marriage or concubinage in the secular clergy, and sporadic incontinence among monks contributed to the view that the popes and the religious were vulnerable, fallible men; that the papacy was not a fortress of order and a tower of salvation. Even so, it would be centuries before the doctrine of infallibility and celibacy would be postulated as dogma and doctrine respectively.
Simony was the ecclesiastical correlate of contemporary corruption in politics. Although concubinage and marriage weren’t openly condoned among the general clergy, the practice was common and not subject to the pressure of public ridicule and scorn. Nonetheless, this situation did test the fiber and substance of the Church’s unity and challenge its security. Quiet reform followed, complemented by a series of wise, scrupulous and discerning pontiffs.
The nadir of the papacy gave way to a new day in papal authority, supremacy, and popularity. Its splendor and magnificence greatly affected the temporal states and their balance of power. Even culture, education, and wealth were somewhat in the control of the Church. So great was her dominance that the temptation to dictate to the temporal community on mundane matters was a very real problem. On occasion, she would yield to this pressure, but never without finally retreating to a less advantageous position. This would be a less painfully learned.
Meanwhile, our progenitors of that day were satisfied to accept the Church’s dictums and doctrines with blind faith. They embraced a primitive type of ritualism and colorful pageantry with veneration. Lacking education and the opportunity to better themselves, they were moved less by the reality and drama of Jesus than by the chimerical preaching of fear.
Prepossessed with the negative, sin and hell was understood and preferred over the positive of grace and heaven. The existence of these uncomplicated souls, in fact their culture, was totally God-centered. This would not last.
Much like a centrifugal force, the villain, time, would come to act on man’s conscience to drive Him out of his centric, ultimately to the periphery of his mind. More on this later.
The intrigue of the Church hierarchy and royalty was completely foreign to the laity of the middle ages. Faith was a simple and pure commitment unshackled by lust, greed, and pride. The clergy and laity were essentially of two separate worlds.
These humble brethren considered the secular clergy several stations above them and the episcopacy beyond classification. Perhaps this explains why public protest of corruption in the Church was not proffered from this quarter. Unschooled, subjugated, controlled, they went through life isolated from the storm gathering overhead, sheltered in their simple, dedicated and honest Faith. The church would not receive its challenge from them. They were, indeed, the Children of God.
Much like a vintage wine aging gave the Church a delicate bouquet. Unfortunately, it was also intoxicating. The Church became more and more indurate to the realities of contemporary life. She lost touch with her people and control of her clergy.
It was at this moment in history that a distraught monk, Martin Luther, tortured by a hatred of authority, nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg church door. The Reformation followed, concomitantly an equally significant evolvement, The Renaissance.
This explosion was of sufficient magnitude to dislodge God from the center of man’s conscience and to trigger the centrifugal force of attending events. Truly, a new day was at hand.
The rebirth of learning and culture kindled in man a new awareness of the genius within him. It marked a time when he became preoccupied with his own glorification at the expense of Christ.
In such an innocent and innocuous manner, the seeds of existentialism were planted, only to wait centuries for man to harvest them.
Though the center of man’s existence shifted to man, this was indeed a self-conscious change. A taint of guilt was manifested in his preoccupation with religious themes in a disproportionate share of his creative endeavors. Science and the “Age of Reason,” which was yet to come, would ease his conscience and liberate his intellect from this confining abstraction.
Another factor contributing to and supporting Church reform was the industrial and economic revolution. Perhaps this sustained and polarized the Church split more than the theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day.
The agrarian nature of the Church was neither prepared for nor able to cope with the emergence of nationalism. Thus, while her spiritual control was being tested, a struggle for power and national identity was further usurping her influence over the state. Accordingly, the issue of Church-State separation would come to be tete-beche obfuscated by devious maneuvering on both sides.
Frustration of this age would lead to schisms, wars, and much suffering, a pattern repeated to this day. Man’s tempo of living would continue to escalate with passing time. The formula would change little:
Progress giving birth to new wealth, exposing old poverty; freedom producing
a mutated form of servitude; opportunity awakening sleeping discrimination;
growth inadvertently causing atrophy; contentment discovering and exposing
misery . . . . . .
would concatenate its way in a quasi-convoluted fashion into mid-twentieth century life. Skepticism, nihilism, isolationism, and unbridled apathy would come to be discovered, then forgotten, and again rediscovered with a new and frenetic frenzy.
Point-counterpoint would come to weave a melody maddening in its intensity through the conscience of man’s mind to snuff out forever the pure and the simple, never again an innocent and unconscious love of God.
Were it possible to go back, one might contemplate the effect the Soul of sixteenth century man might have on modern man. Would it assist him in channeling his energetic driving renewal spirit, and simplify the priority of his preferences? One must wonder.
So often trees and forest seem to merge and submerge into unity for him that bewilderment appears to be his constant companion. Twenty centuries of Church guidance has neither allayed his fears nor reconciled him to accept Christ’s simple changeless and ETERNAL TRUTHS.
The growing complexity of life around him acts as an endless distraction. Only two horrendous world wars have staggered him to attention and awareness of the grave dangers confronting him.
The Holocaust might be imagined:
Completely shipwrecked, the flotsam and jetsam of all ages appear before us.
Fragments of cherished beliefs and ideals of centuries can be seen surfacing, but
only fragments. The heavy bulky awkward shackles of righteous Christianity;
lugubrious and somber mores; stiff and pretentious society; and presumptuous
and greedy colonialism seem to coalesce, producing new densities of meaning and
relevance. Mired in the mud of time, the tissue of man’s fantasies.
Civilized man was finally discovering how fragile, what a put on, his civility. The atrocities of war had given him a new awareness of his depravity and the bestial character existing within his nature.
A critical focus on what he was as well as what he pretended to be, precipitated by this terrifying revelation, was inevitable. Everything now was suspect. It was now considered essential to disinvest himself from the trappings of society and the conventional ideals of civilization. Change, departure from his modus operandi, would be his first step. This would overcome man’s characteristic inertia and establish the required momentum to bring him into a new day. We now find ourselves in that day.
This collision of change had to strike a cornerstone of man’s foundation, religion. It can be said that the Roman Catholic Church did not ignore the tremors nor fail to record the vibrations. Aware that the laity and secular clergy were restless, and in a changing mood, the Church allowed a questioning of basic Catholic tenets. This is still in progress.
Final positions on celibacy, papal authority, infallibility, birth control, and many other issues are yet to be given. Even so, it appears safe to assume that a new religiosity may be added to a growing list of modern improvisations, which include a new sociology, economics, and technology. A more flexible viable one is replacing the staid structure. Moreover, a new disposition has been manifested:
What has been is truly passé; what is now is of central interest; what is to be is truly blasé.
Christianity, and its promise of eternal salvation, is no longer centermost in man’s life but rather on the periphery of his existence. He is quite active and busy, not in search of God, but of himself. Truly, man is unknown, causing him to grope and stumble in the darkness of his identity. Thus, this paradox unfolds:
Hope born out of despair; opportunity out of inequity; power out of the collapse of order
and authority.
Perplexed, he is a sometime tyro pretending to be the epicurean. Whereas he once understood the “good life” to be the purifying experience of hard work, he now pays some tribute to the philosophy of hedonism as if he understood it.
Since man is happier at work than at play, this has in effect made him an alien to himself as well as an emotional cripple. The overflow of this spirit and dilemma appears to have seeped into the Church.
From this progression, a new laity has come into being, dominated by affluence and quasi-intellectualism. It seeks a new role, new image, new sense of fulfillment, and a new power.
A cry for change, for renewal, has reverberated from every quarter. Vatican I and Vatican II gave it the hope it needed and the promise for a new quintessence. Time, patience, and understanding will determine if this is a true bridge to hope and a new and unity or just another ephemera. It will also put Martine Luther and Protestantism in a new perspective. Surely, today personifies the mod and thinking of this giant of man in the Church.
A strong and vibrant middle class has suddenly discovered Luther. Nearly five hundred years late, the laity and secular clergy are intrigued with Luther’s challenge to the papacy, the doctrine of infallibility, celibacy, freedom of conscience, and even the liturgy. Perhaps the only thing that is constant is change itself.
Summarily excommunicated and painted a devil by the then Catholic world, Luther now shines out in God’s heavenly firmament. Perhaps he knows that the contemporary of his celebrated antagonist, the Catholic theologian, is presently his staunch ally and stout defender. Theologians are not only listening, reading and studying Luther’s one-time-heresies, but are considering ways to implement them quickly into Roman Catholicism. Even though this may prove to be a providential strategy and a sound policy, one must still wonder why the rush.
Many pat and reasonable answers might be given, and in many cases, have been. It has been suggested that the Church has frankly been in error; that it has been out of touch with the present world; that it is horribly out of date. It has been suggested that, indeed, she is a pillar blindly standing in the road of progress.
Despite whatever validity these evaluations may have, they are not acceptable to this observer. That is why the picture of man in continuous struggle with his heart, mind, and yes, soul, has been proffered here. Much more is at stake. Simple easy answers will no longer suffice. Christianity, not only Roman Catholicism, has been losing popularity with the common man in this uncommon age. The essence of this challenge is that Christianity, not only Catholicism, is on the block with survival in the balance. Why?
Out of the maze of conflict and confusion has arisen a new man with a new sense of destiny. He sees himself walking among gods. His genius has created the ultimate weapon, synthetic life, interplanetary machines, transplantation of human organs, etc.
This discovery of god-like powers has moved him naturally into a new sense of cosmology and theology. He now sees himself as having the power of greatness within him, reasoning that he is truly the temple of the Universal God, or more traditionally, of Jesus Christ. His body is his church. A peripatetic philosophy of introspection has seized his mind. He welcomes no guidance, no interference, and certainly no authoritative control.
An eternal adolescent, man seeks privilege without responsibility, power without control, peace without sacrifice or restrain, and contentment without struggle.
History appears to have been surgically removed from his conscience by the scalpel of pride, and candid self-glorification.
Quite often, man is found wearing the façade of contentment, the veneer of complacency, betraying the fever which continuously rages within him. Might this fever be that of total disenchantment?
Whether it is fair to say that modern man is wandering aimlessly, uprooted and anchorless, certainly his direction, action and predilection give credence to such speculation. Arius must have felt his antichrist theology was ripe for the society of his day when it behaved in a similar fashion. The necrologists of today have sensed that society is now running concurrently with this philosophy, and therefore boldly published the obituary of God. Perhaps they have something.
Irrational as it may seem, society appears bent on feeding the fever with which it is being consumed. Once panacea were panacea were panacea. No longer would this seem to be so. Simple answers to man’s complex allusions sans struggle, sans searching, sans doubting, sans fear, sans the idea of God are offered to a deliriously receptive, hopeful battered mankind. Man is too numb and preoccupied to question their validity.
Such an attractively wrapped package of essence was certain to jar the very foundation of Christendom. Perhaps the effects it would come to have on the clergy as well as the laity, and their respective reactions to it, should have been predicted. No one was apparently watching the store.
This is not surprising. Society has come to expect professionals of all endeavors to maintain a frigid detachment in the heat of involvement. That is why the antithetical response of many religious to this situation leads one to wonder if they really understood what has taken place. Witness priests, brothers, and apostolate exhibiting their dismay and disillusion, and in many cases, defeat trying to compete for souls with the rampant iconoclasts. Thus broken, a steady stream of them can be seen quitting their rectories, convents, and monasteries for either the eerie promise of the sybarite, or to still the Siren’s call. For this lack of professionalism, they solicit sympathy and assurance while they proselytize a more comfortable faith.
Their new appeal is not to the strength in man’s heart, but to the weakness in man’s loins. Meanwhile, less conspicuous, but equally despairing are those who continue to wail from their sanctuaries and cloisters that, indeed, the religious life and priesthood of Jesus Christ is dead.
No longer is there a marriage of vocation to avocation for them, but rather a struggle betwixt the two. Perhaps there is no quiet, no true isolation. Could the clamor of the time be too much for the contemplative life? Too distracting to see what is happening and who is involved?
To a concerned plebian, this is difficult to fathom. It would seem that the mask of the time, the façade of intemperate indulgence has been accepted as the true face in the crowd, and not the disguise that it is. That a certain faction of the secular clergy has been so misled is a matter of record. Unfortunately, it seems to have cast even a larger shadow.
This is suggested sententiously from what appears to be a movement in the Church, as cautious, temperate, and enlightened practices seem to have loss their appeal at discovering root causes, while a wave of more dynamic, and expedient methods is being employed. This is disconcerting, but not the problem. The actual riddle is that compromise appears to be entertained when one knows that TRUTH cannot be mollified nor abated. Such a dilemma has developed because the Church and its obvious imperfections has become centermost when the ETERNAL TRUTHS should be.
One wonders if this rush to action is not an attempt to ameliorate symptoms rather than to treat causes. Could it be that defining the cause of man’s bewilderment in mid-twentieth century is more elusive than the problem? Perhaps this is why we hear a cry for a prophet to come forth.
Certainly, it would be reassuring to have a kind, affable, witty and sophisticated intelligence such as that of Desiderious Erasmus to step forward. The German’s had their Luther, but the Dutch had their Erasmus. In retrospect, it might be said that Luther was a good patient for his time, but a poor doctor. Erasmus might be said to be that doctor.
This quiet man, Erasmus, sympathized with much of Luther’s thinking, but chose to remain in the Church. Which man showed the greater courage?
Today this question might generate considerable discussion among the erudite, but not the common man. Luther touched man’s spirit and imagination. Erasmus touched only his mind. Albeit this tells us something of the propensities of man, it does not assuage Erasmus’s loss.
The temperament, genius and cold intellect of Erasmus produced a beautiful satirical study, “The Praise of Folly.” In a day when man was angry and threatening to his Church, Erasmus generated light rather than heat, giving man a new insight into the nature of his being. He wanted to call attention to the fact that the Church exists despite the combined inadequacies of the clergy and laity; that the Church was true because it was HIS, not ours; that the Church lived and lives because of and for HIM, not us.
Since FAITH is responsive to man’s deepest needs, he wanted to penetrate the blindness of our personal pride to see the light of the eternal Jesus. Practically forgotten today, this very slender volume is significantly apropos at this very moment in man’s history.
Erasmus illustrated man’s cynical flippancy and irresponsibility. He contented that this appears in man as the uninhibited force of natural instinct, and as the immense effort with which man struggles to achieve his ends, valueless though they may be. “Folly” reminds us that when people grow up, they suffer a loss of youthful energy and flexibility. Seeking the stoic ideal of god-like rationalism brings in its stead a sort of marble monsterism. “Folly” could also be a name for all man’s misdirected effort, for all his elaborate pains to gain the wrong thing:
There we see a woman dressed and pained, pretending to be young, valiantly chasing
a man and her spent youth; here can be seen a young man, collecting degrees, developing
impressive credentials, while responsibility and manhood fade from his sight; over there
we notice a respectable businessman, lying, cheating, misleading, and swindling the public
in order to make money so that his children can spend it in purposeless glee; and here again
we see a priest, the sacerdotal commitment found wanting, emerged in temporal life and
causes, pontificating his new theology and morality as he sinks into the quicksand of life.
This kind of contemporary imagery comes rapidly to mind as one invades the pages of “Folly.” The compulsion to wonder how Erasmus would view today is also there. Probably, it is safe to say that he would note mankind’s fumbling towards eternity with a tinge of sadness, but little surprise.
He would no doubt register only mild protestation at man’s arrogance before man. But before God? Surely, he would be somewhat alarmed. Perhaps he might indeed believe man had retrogressed. For comprehending the comedic figure of man before God was the quintessence of humility in his age. Puncturing the prideful pomposity of man was essential to understanding and tolerating oneself in the sixteenth century. Hopefully, this is not anachronistic nor hors de saison.
Even though we may not have spiritual heavyweights like Erasmus around to deflate man’s ego and give him balance, this is not so disturbing as is the knowledge that the need is neither accepted nor recognized. Rather a cult is developing to pay it homage.
New symbols, signs and aphorisms have been hastily created to demean conventional concepts, traditions and practices. Worthy as some of these new ideal and ideas may be, to summarily and willfully negate one’s heritage with a wave of hostility and condescension suggests paranoia. The symptoms are there.
Man is riding the crest of prosperity and a state of real, ideal and/or contrived euphoria envelops him. Once a slave to time, he now finds it weighs heavily on his hands. The fruits of his efforts have made time a luxury, producing a surplus of idleness, and this has made him uneasy.
Many jobs have been created with no productive end in mind, but only to fill the void. This has not been enough. Consequently, play has become hectic, demanding, serious, and more important than work. The awful rush to fill the dismal void of hours hangs like a sickness over man’s head. Consumption and possession have become obsessions; a compulsion to satiate oneself with food, sex, and material things is now viewed as a necessity. In man’s quest for life, meaning, peace, and purpose, man has often been left frantic, supported only by nerve pills and other placebos. His attention to Church, religion, family, society, state, and the old fashion values has been casually shifted to a perfunctory plateau of his mind. “Folly” is still his name.
One hears that times have changed, but that the Church’s life and function is petty, silly, anachronistic, irrelevant, and hypocritical by today’s standards. What is not said is closer to the nerve of the matter:
The Church and Christianity in general has been used by man as a crutch to shore him up
when the going got rough; when he was alone and desperate and had no one to turn to, he
could always find solace in his Church and with his God. The two were synonymous in his
mind.
Not so today. Comfortable, prosperous, modern man looks within himself for the answers. Prayer and supplication are not for him. Yet, with all that he is and has, he will readily admit to being empty, unfulfilled, and seeking, continuously seeking. This is an age when public confession of the most intimate thoughts is common. Nothing appears sacred or private between man and his God, a phenomenon that has produced an identity syndrome composed of anxiety, frustration and the essence of alienation. A common observation:
Thrusting out contemptuously, he projects and substitutes this sense of guilt to causes
outside himself. He cries for change but hopes to extricate himself from personal
involvement. His demands are implicitly or explicitly focused on the Church and her
responsibility to him.
Somehow, he has forgotten or erased from his memory that if the Church falls, he fails. If Jesus Christ is the TIMELESS TRUTH, then the answers must be there. Certainly, renewal will not suffice if man does not understand that the Church has not failed him, but that he has failed it. The Church reflects him. The bromides, platitudes, and formulae to instant happiness have never been relevant to man’s needs. They only compound his illusions and delusions. There is a danger that man’s caprice will tempt him to advocate the diminution of the Church, an ersatz Lord of Life being hastily put into focus.
A happening is not surprising in religion today. The last two generations have endured as much change as the balance of man’s history. That this ordeal of change has been a baffling experience is irrefutable. Losing his self-image, man appears to have developed myopia and a loss of depth perception as well, throwing him into punishing melancholy.
Man is restless for action, any action. One wonders if this affliction has not penetrated the staid structure of Roman Catholicism. It is one thing to articulate the ETERNAL TRUTHS in man’s vernacular, but quite another to adulterate them for palatability.
One theologian conversing with another might construe this statement to be unfair. It is, however, made by a plebian to reflect the silent dilemma of the Catholic laity. Truth is the essence of anything and cannot be altered is a dialectic he understands.
The silent man in the pew does not want to be considered a proponent of empiricism. If new insights into the TIMELESS TRUTHS of Jesus are discovered, he would prefer that they be carefully and definitively defined, painstakingly weighed, systematically categorized, and then providentially implemented into his religion. Filling the air with waves of speculation and testing the currents of acceptance will always be considered suspect and only produce chaos.
Personal involvement in change is a demanding emotional experience. One must give up that which he knows and understands relative to himself for that which is unknown and perhaps feared. Shedding one’s personal integument and assuming a new posture, image, association, status quo, and identity are painless only when done without conscious insight.
Just as one is ever losing and replacing his epidermis, contented man changes bits and pieces all the time without knowing it. Each time one accepts a new idea, new concept, something is quitted, something is lost. That is why the revolution of ideas is preceded by intellectual speculation. It prepares the way.
Mounting the current Christian renewal and ecumenical movement without such cultivation would seem absurd. Yet, this is the prima facie situation at the moment. After a wave of emotional altruism and generosity of spirit, it appears that the chill of self-doubt has set in, producing a silent retreat to the more comfortable known and understood ground.
If this is questioned, one need only observe who still controls and initiates the ecumenical: the clergy. This has been frustrating for the secular clergy, but what of the bewilderment of the laity?
No improvement has ever been made in the conventional and laborious process of making wine. The implementation of a more streamlined, truly catholic FAITH is analogous to wine making. No steps can be left out or hurried.
Christianity and Roman Catholicism are not going out of business. The link between them and the non-Christian world is likely to improve, as improve it must. Nonetheless, man’s self-image and identity with his God, now more nebulous than ever, must first receive attention.
Emotional posturing and psychological speculating have proven of little value. Though he needs guidance badly, this does not mean that he wants his Church to become entombed in his quagmire. Rather, he prefers that his Church view and understand his needs with providential detachment.
An Erasmus recognized this. A Thomas Aquinas provided the rationale for making Christian theology and philosophy a viable formula for a timeless Church. Why have their voices not been heard in modern times?
Modern man is a complex and enlightened individual, disciplined and cultivated, but nonetheless a child, always a child in his religiosity. Seeing his priests caught up in the period’s social and political activism, kneeling to the pragmatic cries of the day, does not contribute to his sense of essence nor does it give him a fix on his eternal salvation.
Man wants renewal, enlightened renewal, but not necessarily change per se. This might mean the digesting of Thomistic theology and philosophy, and the essence of revelations, that is, getting inside the thoughts and ideas of the FAITH. The laity has never been fed these before. This type of renewal would require energetic pursuit on the part of the laity but would give it a foundation of essence, something now missing. True ecumenicism could then proceed with speed.
The Roman Catholic Church in transition must accept her history, understand her laity, and patiently implement a more substantive educational program before true ecumenicism might be broached. Otherwise, the body Christendom could be weakened by her arrogant disregard for the dilemma of the silent man in the pew.
The End
James R. Fisher, Jr.
Completed: 8 April 1968
Anchorage, Kentucky
USA
A Plebian View of the Roman Catholic Church in Decline
PART ONE
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC LAITY IN SEARCH OF ITS CHURCH
James R. Fisher, Jr.
Written in 1968
© November 2005
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NOTE: This was never published. It was written just before I took on a life changing assignment. Only in my 30s, I was being sent to South Africa to facilitate the merger of our South African subsidiary with a British affiliate and a South African chemical company.
This essay was written only days before going to South Africa. The Church was in turmoil trying to assimilate the tenets of Vatican I and II, while the US was in chaos over saber rattling in Viet Nam. The disenfranchised generation of American youth born to baby boomer parents was now eligible for the draft. My generation went into the military without protest, but this generation was inclined to burn their draft cards or escape to Canada. I was leaving this all behind to take on the South African assignment. It was early April 1968.
A devout Catholic, I would emerge from this experience a different man. I went into Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and came out of it aware of the darkness in my own heart. I am now writing a novel of that experience.
Religion was one of my anchors as a youth, and I would imagine if I were a Jew I would have been considered orthodox. Garry Wills wrote a book in 2002 titled “Why I Am A Catholic.” I found the title amusing.
Roman Catholic indoctrination is so strong that if you receive it while very young there is little chance you can ever escape it no matter what games you play with your mind. I came to South Africa sure of my faith and my identity, and left in search of the real parents of my soul.
I make no apologies for the sophomoric style of this essay. Recording it now, unchanged, for the record, I see that I was a Catholic writer before publishing my first essay or book, and I think it is fair to say, after eight books and more than 350 published essays to date, I remain true to that identity.
My novel, which is to be titled “Green Island in a Black Seas,” relates to my struggle with South African Apartheid, my company’s duplicity, my Irish Roman Catholic faith, my marriage vows, my wife and four children, and a life that brought to the fore one word to describe everything: betrayal.
Writing has provided sanctuary and retreat from confusion. Writing has made me aware you don’t have to be published to be a writer. You just have to make connection with yourself by connecting the letters of the alphabet. It is published here as an invitation to readers to ponder their own situation.
Note recorded this date: November 20, 2005
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To a casual observer, it would seem that the Roman Catholic Church has always taken itself seriously. With an air of omniscience, it has conducted affairs of the Catholic world in a somewhat unapproachable, even unimpeachable hauteur. Wasn’t the Church man’s only means to eternal salvation?
Not long ago, this question would have been considered academic, in fact absurd, in the eyes of the average Catholic. Ecclesiastical thinking and activity had not trickled down to his level. This was not surprising. He had become conditioned to being spoon fed a definitive, catechetical approach to religious education. A comprehensive and conceptual understanding of the Church, her theology, philosophy, and history was not promulgated to the general laity.
The reason for this was quite simple. An authoritarian and paternal Church hierarchy did not feel it was needed. That is why the present remedial and ameliorating steps being simultaneously considered and implemented have been found both stultifying and confusing to many on both sides of the altar.
Church history indicates that this current situation is actually following precedence. Crises in the Church have invariably been followed by Vatican Councils, which in turn have led to new doctrines and dogma. The present contingency is similar to its historic predecessor but yet different. It differs in scope, mood, and ambition. A very real threat that mid-twentieth century man will finally reject Christianity has put the Church in a most conciliatory frame of mind. Worthy and necessary as Christian unity may be, there exists cold realities, which must be faced.
Catholicism has instilled beliefs, attitudes, habits, and practices with which only Catholics have been identified. Much of this has been somewhat symbolic, like not eating meat on Friday. Nevertheless, these are real and fixed in the minds and hearts of many who call themselves, “Catholic.” Such a preconditioned laity may attract obfuscation and conflict instead of harmony and a spirit of ecumenicism if they do not see Church history and thought in true perspective, as well as understand what is taking place today. The man in the pew must identify with the Church in transition, or all is for naught.
Born more than thirty years ago a congenial member of the Roman Catholic Church, this observer has no claim to authority. However, raised and inculcated in Catholicism in the traditional fashion has produced its effects and memories. For example, a dependence on dogma and doctrine is remembered instead of the beauty of Christianity. Even after reason prevailed, these tenets have merged and submerged, often obliterating rational clarity.
That is why an issue like birth control languishes in the mind of the Catholic, waiting, desperately waiting for Church sanction, even though logic and reason has already bombarded his mind with the answer.
Consequently, it is quite typical for the average Catholic to accept trauma, doubt, confusion, thought, and education as the natural progression to truth, understanding, and meaning as he is able to glean it.
This experience is necessarily private and usually committed to silence. But the times dictate that this must change. It is not the individual but the entire Church, which is now going through a painful reappraisal. Ultimately, it will be the cataclysm of all Catholic and Christian thought and interpretation, which will prove the destiny of this FAITH, and its relevance to this time.
Seldom does the man in the pew, the true plebian, express his will. This must not be. Perhaps one plebian view may encourage many others to unshackle their minds from wondering in silence about their world and their fate. Their responsibility to contribute to the dialogue has been obviated by history.
Three centuries after Christ’s death this did not seem so certain. The Church faced a great test. A Greek monk named Arius was preaching a doctrine that Christ was the Son of God, but neither consubstantial nor coeternal with the Father. This doctrine called Arianism was the reason for the Council of Nicaea. Here the Church solemnly proclaimed her belief in “ . . .one Lord, Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, born of the Father before all time, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, the same in Being with the Father (consubstantial) . . .”
Today we know this as the Nicene Creed, which has become a touchstone of sound orthodoxy and Church unity.
A period of grace, power, and growth followed for the Church, only to be tainted by the spoils of such good fortune. It was Middle Age. Simony in the papacy and the episcopacy; marriage or concubinage in the secular clergy, and sporadic incontinence among monks contributed to the view that the popes and the religious were vulnerable, fallible men; that the papacy was not a fortress of order and a tower of salvation. Even so, it would be centuries before the doctrine of infallibility and celibacy would be postulated as dogma and doctrine respectively.
Simony was the ecclesiastical correlate of contemporary corruption in politics. Although concubinage and marriage weren’t openly condoned among the general clergy, the practice was common and not subject to the pressure of public ridicule and scorn. Nonetheless, this situation did test the fiber and substance of the Church’s unity and challenge its security. Quiet reform followed, complemented by a series of wise, scrupulous and discerning pontiffs.
The nadir of the papacy gave way to a new day in papal authority, supremacy, and popularity. Its splendor and magnificence greatly affected the temporal states and their balance of power. Even culture, education, and wealth were somewhat in the control of the Church. So great was her dominance that the temptation to dictate to the temporal community on mundane matters was a very real problem. On occasion, she would yield to this pressure, but never without finally retreating to a less advantageous position. This would be a less painfully learned.
Meanwhile, our progenitors of that day were satisfied to accept the Church’s dictums and doctrines with blind faith. They embraced a primitive type of ritualism and colorful pageantry with veneration. Lacking education and the opportunity to better themselves, they were moved less by the reality and drama of Jesus than by the chimerical preaching of fear.
Prepossessed with the negative, sin and hell was understood and preferred over the positive of grace and heaven. The existence of these uncomplicated souls, in fact their culture, was totally God-centered. This would not last.
Much like a centrifugal force, the villain, time, would come to act on man’s conscience to drive Him out of his centric, ultimately to the periphery of his mind. More on this later.
The intrigue of the Church hierarchy and royalty was completely foreign to the laity of the middle ages. Faith was a simple and pure commitment unshackled by lust, greed, and pride. The clergy and laity were essentially of two separate worlds.
These humble brethren considered the secular clergy several stations above them and the episcopacy beyond classification. Perhaps this explains why public protest of corruption in the Church was not proffered from this quarter. Unschooled, subjugated, controlled, they went through life isolated from the storm gathering overhead, sheltered in their simple, dedicated and honest Faith. The church would not receive its challenge from them. They were, indeed, the Children of God.
Much like a vintage wine aging gave the Church a delicate bouquet. Unfortunately, it was also intoxicating. The Church became more and more indurate to the realities of contemporary life. She lost touch with her people and control of her clergy.
It was at this moment in history that a distraught monk, Martin Luther, tortured by a hatred of authority, nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg church door. The Reformation followed, concomitantly an equally significant evolvement, The Renaissance.
This explosion was of sufficient magnitude to dislodge God from the center of man’s conscience and to trigger the centrifugal force of attending events. Truly, a new day was at hand.
The rebirth of learning and culture kindled in man a new awareness of the genius within him. It marked a time when he became preoccupied with his own glorification at the expense of Christ.
In such an innocent and innocuous manner, the seeds of existentialism were planted, only to wait centuries for man to harvest them.
Though the center of man’s existence shifted to man, this was indeed a self-conscious change. A taint of guilt was manifested in his preoccupation with religious themes in a disproportionate share of his creative endeavors. Science and the “Age of Reason,” which was yet to come, would ease his conscience and liberate his intellect from this confining abstraction.
Another factor contributing to and supporting Church reform was the industrial and economic revolution. Perhaps this sustained and polarized the Church split more than the theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day.
The agrarian nature of the Church was neither prepared for nor able to cope with the emergence of nationalism. Thus, while her spiritual control was being tested, a struggle for power and national identity was further usurping her influence over the state. Accordingly, the issue of Church-State separation would come to be tete-beche obfuscated by devious maneuvering on both sides.
Frustration of this age would lead to schisms, wars, and much suffering, a pattern repeated to this day. Man’s tempo of living would continue to escalate with passing time. The formula would change little:
Progress giving birth to new wealth, exposing old poverty; freedom producing
a mutated form of servitude; opportunity awakening sleeping discrimination;
growth inadvertently causing atrophy; contentment discovering and exposing
misery . . . . . .
would concatenate its way in a quasi-convoluted fashion into mid-twentieth century life. Skepticism, nihilism, isolationism, and unbridled apathy would come to be discovered, then forgotten, and again rediscovered with a new and frenetic frenzy.
Point-counterpoint would come to weave a melody maddening in its intensity through the conscience of man’s mind to snuff out forever the pure and the simple, never again an innocent and unconscious love of God.
Were it possible to go back, one might contemplate the effect the Soul of sixteenth century man might have on modern man. Would it assist him in channeling his energetic driving renewal spirit, and simplify the priority of his preferences? One must wonder.
So often trees and forest seem to merge and submerge into unity for him that bewilderment appears to be his constant companion. Twenty centuries of Church guidance has neither allayed his fears nor reconciled him to accept Christ’s simple changeless and ETERNAL TRUTHS.
The growing complexity of life around him acts as an endless distraction. Only two horrendous world wars have staggered him to attention and awareness of the grave dangers confronting him.
The Holocaust might be imagined:
Completely shipwrecked, the flotsam and jetsam of all ages appear before us.
Fragments of cherished beliefs and ideals of centuries can be seen surfacing, but
only fragments. The heavy bulky awkward shackles of righteous Christianity;
lugubrious and somber mores; stiff and pretentious society; and presumptuous
and greedy colonialism seem to coalesce, producing new densities of meaning and
relevance. Mired in the mud of time, the tissue of man’s fantasies.
Civilized man was finally discovering how fragile, what a put on, his civility. The atrocities of war had given him a new awareness of his depravity and the bestial character existing within his nature.
A critical focus on what he was as well as what he pretended to be, precipitated by this terrifying revelation, was inevitable. Everything now was suspect. It was now considered essential to disinvest himself from the trappings of society and the conventional ideals of civilization. Change, departure from his modus operandi, would be his first step. This would overcome man’s characteristic inertia and establish the required momentum to bring him into a new day. We now find ourselves in that day.
This collision of change had to strike a cornerstone of man’s foundation, religion. It can be said that the Roman Catholic Church did not ignore the tremors nor fail to record the vibrations. Aware that the laity and secular clergy were restless, and in a changing mood, the Church allowed a questioning of basic Catholic tenets. This is still in progress.
Final positions on celibacy, papal authority, infallibility, birth control, and many other issues are yet to be given. Even so, it appears safe to assume that a new religiosity may be added to a growing list of modern improvisations, which include a new sociology, economics, and technology. A more flexible viable one is replacing the staid structure. Moreover, a new disposition has been manifested:
What has been is truly passé; what is now is of central interest; what is to be is truly blasé.
Christianity, and its promise of eternal salvation, is no longer centermost in man’s life but rather on the periphery of his existence. He is quite active and busy, not in search of God, but of himself. Truly, man is unknown, causing him to grope and stumble in the darkness of his identity. Thus, this paradox unfolds:
Hope born out of despair; opportunity out of inequity; power out of the collapse of order
and authority.
Perplexed, he is a sometime tyro pretending to be the epicurean. Whereas he once understood the “good life” to be the purifying experience of hard work, he now pays some tribute to the philosophy of hedonism as if he understood it.
Since man is happier at work than at play, this has in effect made him an alien to himself as well as an emotional cripple. The overflow of this spirit and dilemma appears to have seeped into the Church.
From this progression, a new laity has come into being, dominated by affluence and quasi-intellectualism. It seeks a new role, new image, new sense of fulfillment, and a new power.
A cry for change, for renewal, has reverberated from every quarter. Vatican I and Vatican II gave it the hope it needed and the promise for a new quintessence. Time, patience, and understanding will determine if this is a true bridge to hope and a new and unity or just another ephemera. It will also put Martine Luther and Protestantism in a new perspective. Surely, today personifies the mod and thinking of this giant of man in the Church.
A strong and vibrant middle class has suddenly discovered Luther. Nearly five hundred years late, the laity and secular clergy are intrigued with Luther’s challenge to the papacy, the doctrine of infallibility, celibacy, freedom of conscience, and even the liturgy. Perhaps the only thing that is constant is change itself.
Summarily excommunicated and painted a devil by the then Catholic world, Luther now shines out in God’s heavenly firmament. Perhaps he knows that the contemporary of his celebrated antagonist, the Catholic theologian, is presently his staunch ally and stout defender. Theologians are not only listening, reading and studying Luther’s one-time-heresies, but are considering ways to implement them quickly into Roman Catholicism. Even though this may prove to be a providential strategy and a sound policy, one must still wonder why the rush.
Many pat and reasonable answers might be given, and in many cases, have been. It has been suggested that the Church has frankly been in error; that it has been out of touch with the present world; that it is horribly out of date. It has been suggested that, indeed, she is a pillar blindly standing in the road of progress.
Despite whatever validity these evaluations may have, they are not acceptable to this observer. That is why the picture of man in continuous struggle with his heart, mind, and yes, soul, has been proffered here. Much more is at stake. Simple easy answers will no longer suffice. Christianity, not only Roman Catholicism, has been losing popularity with the common man in this uncommon age. The essence of this challenge is that Christianity, not only Catholicism, is on the block with survival in the balance. Why?
Out of the maze of conflict and confusion has arisen a new man with a new sense of destiny. He sees himself walking among gods. His genius has created the ultimate weapon, synthetic life, interplanetary machines, transplantation of human organs, etc.
This discovery of god-like powers has moved him naturally into a new sense of cosmology and theology. He now sees himself as having the power of greatness within him, reasoning that he is truly the temple of the Universal God, or more traditionally, of Jesus Christ. His body is his church. A peripatetic philosophy of introspection has seized his mind. He welcomes no guidance, no interference, and certainly no authoritative control.
An eternal adolescent, man seeks privilege without responsibility, power without control, peace without sacrifice or restrain, and contentment without struggle.
History appears to have been surgically removed from his conscience by the scalpel of pride, and candid self-glorification.
Quite often, man is found wearing the façade of contentment, the veneer of complacency, betraying the fever which continuously rages within him. Might this fever be that of total disenchantment?
Whether it is fair to say that modern man is wandering aimlessly, uprooted and anchorless, certainly his direction, action and predilection give credence to such speculation. Arius must have felt his antichrist theology was ripe for the society of his day when it behaved in a similar fashion. The necrologists of today have sensed that society is now running concurrently with this philosophy, and therefore boldly published the obituary of God. Perhaps they have something.
Irrational as it may seem, society appears bent on feeding the fever with which it is being consumed. Once panacea were panacea were panacea. No longer would this seem to be so. Simple answers to man’s complex allusions sans struggle, sans searching, sans doubting, sans fear, sans the idea of God are offered to a deliriously receptive, hopeful battered mankind. Man is too numb and preoccupied to question their validity.
Such an attractively wrapped package of essence was certain to jar the very foundation of Christendom. Perhaps the effects it would come to have on the clergy as well as the laity, and their respective reactions to it, should have been predicted. No one was apparently watching the store.
This is not surprising. Society has come to expect professionals of all endeavors to maintain a frigid detachment in the heat of involvement. That is why the antithetical response of many religious to this situation leads one to wonder if they really understood what has taken place. Witness priests, brothers, and apostolate exhibiting their dismay and disillusion, and in many cases, defeat trying to compete for souls with the rampant iconoclasts. Thus broken, a steady stream of them can be seen quitting their rectories, convents, and monasteries for either the eerie promise of the sybarite, or to still the Siren’s call. For this lack of professionalism, they solicit sympathy and assurance while they proselytize a more comfortable faith.
Their new appeal is not to the strength in man’s heart, but to the weakness in man’s loins. Meanwhile, less conspicuous, but equally despairing are those who continue to wail from their sanctuaries and cloisters that, indeed, the religious life and priesthood of Jesus Christ is dead.
No longer is there a marriage of vocation to avocation for them, but rather a struggle betwixt the two. Perhaps there is no quiet, no true isolation. Could the clamor of the time be too much for the contemplative life? Too distracting to see what is happening and who is involved?
To a concerned plebian, this is difficult to fathom. It would seem that the mask of the time, the façade of intemperate indulgence has been accepted as the true face in the crowd, and not the disguise that it is. That a certain faction of the secular clergy has been so misled is a matter of record. Unfortunately, it seems to have cast even a larger shadow.
This is suggested sententiously from what appears to be a movement in the Church, as cautious, temperate, and enlightened practices seem to have loss their appeal at discovering root causes, while a wave of more dynamic, and expedient methods is being employed. This is disconcerting, but not the problem. The actual riddle is that compromise appears to be entertained when one knows that TRUTH cannot be mollified nor abated. Such a dilemma has developed because the Church and its obvious imperfections has become centermost when the ETERNAL TRUTHS should be.
One wonders if this rush to action is not an attempt to ameliorate symptoms rather than to treat causes. Could it be that defining the cause of man’s bewilderment in mid-twentieth century is more elusive than the problem? Perhaps this is why we hear a cry for a prophet to come forth.
Certainly, it would be reassuring to have a kind, affable, witty and sophisticated intelligence such as that of Desiderious Erasmus to step forward. The German’s had their Luther, but the Dutch had their Erasmus. In retrospect, it might be said that Luther was a good patient for his time, but a poor doctor. Erasmus might be said to be that doctor.
This quiet man, Erasmus, sympathized with much of Luther’s thinking, but chose to remain in the Church. Which man showed the greater courage?
Today this question might generate considerable discussion among the erudite, but not the common man. Luther touched man’s spirit and imagination. Erasmus touched only his mind. Albeit this tells us something of the propensities of man, it does not assuage Erasmus’s loss.
The temperament, genius and cold intellect of Erasmus produced a beautiful satirical study, “The Praise of Folly.” In a day when man was angry and threatening to his Church, Erasmus generated light rather than heat, giving man a new insight into the nature of his being. He wanted to call attention to the fact that the Church exists despite the combined inadequacies of the clergy and laity; that the Church was true because it was HIS, not ours; that the Church lived and lives because of and for HIM, not us.
Since FAITH is responsive to man’s deepest needs, he wanted to penetrate the blindness of our personal pride to see the light of the eternal Jesus. Practically forgotten today, this very slender volume is significantly apropos at this very moment in man’s history.
Erasmus illustrated man’s cynical flippancy and irresponsibility. He contented that this appears in man as the uninhibited force of natural instinct, and as the immense effort with which man struggles to achieve his ends, valueless though they may be. “Folly” reminds us that when people grow up, they suffer a loss of youthful energy and flexibility. Seeking the stoic ideal of god-like rationalism brings in its stead a sort of marble monsterism. “Folly” could also be a name for all man’s misdirected effort, for all his elaborate pains to gain the wrong thing:
There we see a woman dressed and pained, pretending to be young, valiantly chasing
a man and her spent youth; here can be seen a young man, collecting degrees, developing
impressive credentials, while responsibility and manhood fade from his sight; over there
we notice a respectable businessman, lying, cheating, misleading, and swindling the public
in order to make money so that his children can spend it in purposeless glee; and here again
we see a priest, the sacerdotal commitment found wanting, emerged in temporal life and
causes, pontificating his new theology and morality as he sinks into the quicksand of life.
This kind of contemporary imagery comes rapidly to mind as one invades the pages of “Folly.” The compulsion to wonder how Erasmus would view today is also there. Probably, it is safe to say that he would note mankind’s fumbling towards eternity with a tinge of sadness, but little surprise.
He would no doubt register only mild protestation at man’s arrogance before man. But before God? Surely, he would be somewhat alarmed. Perhaps he might indeed believe man had retrogressed. For comprehending the comedic figure of man before God was the quintessence of humility in his age. Puncturing the prideful pomposity of man was essential to understanding and tolerating oneself in the sixteenth century. Hopefully, this is not anachronistic nor hors de saison.
Even though we may not have spiritual heavyweights like Erasmus around to deflate man’s ego and give him balance, this is not so disturbing as is the knowledge that the need is neither accepted nor recognized. Rather a cult is developing to pay it homage.
New symbols, signs and aphorisms have been hastily created to demean conventional concepts, traditions and practices. Worthy as some of these new ideal and ideas may be, to summarily and willfully negate one’s heritage with a wave of hostility and condescension suggests paranoia. The symptoms are there.
Man is riding the crest of prosperity and a state of real, ideal and/or contrived euphoria envelops him. Once a slave to time, he now finds it weighs heavily on his hands. The fruits of his efforts have made time a luxury, producing a surplus of idleness, and this has made him uneasy.
Many jobs have been created with no productive end in mind, but only to fill the void. This has not been enough. Consequently, play has become hectic, demanding, serious, and more important than work. The awful rush to fill the dismal void of hours hangs like a sickness over man’s head. Consumption and possession have become obsessions; a compulsion to satiate oneself with food, sex, and material things is now viewed as a necessity. In man’s quest for life, meaning, peace, and purpose, man has often been left frantic, supported only by nerve pills and other placebos. His attention to Church, religion, family, society, state, and the old fashion values has been casually shifted to a perfunctory plateau of his mind. “Folly” is still his name.
One hears that times have changed, but that the Church’s life and function is petty, silly, anachronistic, irrelevant, and hypocritical by today’s standards. What is not said is closer to the nerve of the matter:
The Church and Christianity in general has been used by man as a crutch to shore him up
when the going got rough; when he was alone and desperate and had no one to turn to, he
could always find solace in his Church and with his God. The two were synonymous in his
mind.
Not so today. Comfortable, prosperous, modern man looks within himself for the answers. Prayer and supplication are not for him. Yet, with all that he is and has, he will readily admit to being empty, unfulfilled, and seeking, continuously seeking. This is an age when public confession of the most intimate thoughts is common. Nothing appears sacred or private between man and his God, a phenomenon that has produced an identity syndrome composed of anxiety, frustration and the essence of alienation. A common observation:
Thrusting out contemptuously, he projects and substitutes this sense of guilt to causes
outside himself. He cries for change but hopes to extricate himself from personal
involvement. His demands are implicitly or explicitly focused on the Church and her
responsibility to him.
Somehow, he has forgotten or erased from his memory that if the Church falls, he fails. If Jesus Christ is the TIMELESS TRUTH, then the answers must be there. Certainly, renewal will not suffice if man does not understand that the Church has not failed him, but that he has failed it. The Church reflects him. The bromides, platitudes, and formulae to instant happiness have never been relevant to man’s needs. They only compound his illusions and delusions. There is a danger that man’s caprice will tempt him to advocate the diminution of the Church, an ersatz Lord of Life being hastily put into focus.
A happening is not surprising in religion today. The last two generations have endured as much change as the balance of man’s history. That this ordeal of change has been a baffling experience is irrefutable. Losing his self-image, man appears to have developed myopia and a loss of depth perception as well, throwing him into punishing melancholy.
Man is restless for action, any action. One wonders if this affliction has not penetrated the staid structure of Roman Catholicism. It is one thing to articulate the ETERNAL TRUTHS in man’s vernacular, but quite another to adulterate them for palatability.
One theologian conversing with another might construe this statement to be unfair. It is, however, made by a plebian to reflect the silent dilemma of the Catholic laity. Truth is the essence of anything and cannot be altered is a dialectic he understands.
The silent man in the pew does not want to be considered a proponent of empiricism. If new insights into the TIMELESS TRUTHS of Jesus are discovered, he would prefer that they be carefully and definitively defined, painstakingly weighed, systematically categorized, and then providentially implemented into his religion. Filling the air with waves of speculation and testing the currents of acceptance will always be considered suspect and only produce chaos.
Personal involvement in change is a demanding emotional experience. One must give up that which he knows and understands relative to himself for that which is unknown and perhaps feared. Shedding one’s personal integument and assuming a new posture, image, association, status quo, and identity are painless only when done without conscious insight.
Just as one is ever losing and replacing his epidermis, contented man changes bits and pieces all the time without knowing it. Each time one accepts a new idea, new concept, something is quitted, something is lost. That is why the revolution of ideas is preceded by intellectual speculation. It prepares the way.
Mounting the current Christian renewal and ecumenical movement without such cultivation would seem absurd. Yet, this is the prima facie situation at the moment. After a wave of emotional altruism and generosity of spirit, it appears that the chill of self-doubt has set in, producing a silent retreat to the more comfortable known and understood ground.
If this is questioned, one need only observe who still controls and initiates the ecumenical: the clergy. This has been frustrating for the secular clergy, but what of the bewilderment of the laity?
No improvement has ever been made in the conventional and laborious process of making wine. The implementation of a more streamlined, truly catholic FAITH is analogous to wine making. No steps can be left out or hurried.
Christianity and Roman Catholicism are not going out of business. The link between them and the non-Christian world is likely to improve, as improve it must. Nonetheless, man’s self-image and identity with his God, now more nebulous than ever, must first receive attention.
Emotional posturing and psychological speculating have proven of little value. Though he needs guidance badly, this does not mean that he wants his Church to become entombed in his quagmire. Rather, he prefers that his Church view and understand his needs with providential detachment.
An Erasmus recognized this. A Thomas Aquinas provided the rationale for making Christian theology and philosophy a viable formula for a timeless Church. Why have their voices not been heard in modern times?
Modern man is a complex and enlightened individual, disciplined and cultivated, but nonetheless a child, always a child in his religiosity. Seeing his priests caught up in the period’s social and political activism, kneeling to the pragmatic cries of the day, does not contribute to his sense of essence nor does it give him a fix on his eternal salvation.
Man wants renewal, enlightened renewal, but not necessarily change per se. This might mean the digesting of Thomistic theology and philosophy, and the essence of revelations, that is, getting inside the thoughts and ideas of the FAITH. The laity has never been fed these before. This type of renewal would require energetic pursuit on the part of the laity but would give it a foundation of essence, something now missing. True ecumenicism could then proceed with speed.
The Roman Catholic Church in transition must accept her history, understand her laity, and patiently implement a more substantive educational program before true ecumenicism might be broached. Otherwise, the body Christendom could be weakened by her arrogant disregard for the dilemma of the silent man in the pew.
The End
James R. Fisher, Jr.
Completed: 8 April 1968
Anchorage, Kentucky
USA