COMMENTS FROM GERMANY TO CONVERSATION OF "THIS AND THAT OF A SUNDAY"

COMMENT FROM GERMANY TO CONVERSATION OF “THIS AND THAT OF A SUNDAY”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 11, 2010 (Veterans/Armistice Day)

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REFERENCE:

The purpose of a dispositional conversation like the one cited here is to stimulate thought of the reader in the context of his or her cognitive biases.

Cognitive biases may be defined as our belief system. We acquire this belief system mainly unconsciously from our acculturation from birth onward and mainly from the outside, in.

How we think and what we believe is too often an incidental and accidental accumulation of cultural biases about people, places and things. Moreover, there is an American, European, and other cognitive biases that are centuries old, which may permeate our consciousness, based upon our exposure to them.

There is no escape from cultural biases, but they can be a prison if one is unable to be aware and accepting of them as being so, or without the understanding they make one no better or worse than someone with a different set of biases or a totally different belief system.

Most of my missives are used as a litmus test to introduce you, the reader, to yourself. There is no desire for you to think, believe or assume my biases. My interest is for you to be better in touch with your biases and to determine if they support or fail to serve you in your life.

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A READER FRIEND FROM GERMANY WRITES:

Jim,

We recently had an outrage here in Germany because the Vice President of the German Central Bank, Mr. Sarrazin, has published a book with his views on some issues in Germany - immigration, work ethics, education, political mindset and generic roots.

The latter, “generic roots” was the one causing the outrage despite the fact that all the other topics are much more relevant to our general situation.

In the short chapter on generic roots, he was only citing some new scientific publications, but the question of "inherited intelligence" is a no-no in Germany. This is especially true with the left wing parties.

Therefore, we have here a full range of programs and provisions to help people from the working class to get a higher education and get into the pipeline for elevated jobs.

It is an open secret that this has not been very successful. But no one who depends on elections and voters would ever challenge the principle.

In the former DDR (Communist East Germany), it was even worse:

Only when you were coming from the "working class,” as if others do not work, were you allowed to study at universities. The result was the economic collapse of the DDR system. It was not the political pressure from the West.

Best regards,

Manfred

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

My children since they were born have lived in relative luxury traveling across the United States, vacationing in its four corners, while traveling and living in Europe and South Africa. They have attended private schools and took for granted being members of the American affluent class, that is, until I “retired” the first time in my thirties. Then a bit of reality hit them.

Their father didn’t work. He read books all the time, played basketball and tennis. And if he wasn’t doing that, he was writing.

When he was nearly broke, he went back to school full-time for six years consulting on the side. They no longer took long vacations across the United States much less the world, but still lived in relative luxury in an upscale neighborhood compared to what their father had experienced in growing up.

To this day, they scoff at the idea that they are working class as their father insists is his roots.

I am testimony to what is offered the America working class if one is willing to take advantage of the opportunity. As I explained to them, I have found at no time at no level in no job or situation in which others born to other circumstances had superior “inherited” gifts to what my parents had given me.

My four children show signs of the acculturation of working class, but they refuse to see it, only recognizing they have had the wits to do relatively well as part of the affluent class.

For example, my son, the tennis pro of a major American tennis complex, is in the upper one percent of American income, but still resents that he is not treated like a member of the club.

A daughter who has been in the upper 1 percent before the economic meltdown of 2008, reached inside herself and took on any job with dignity and purpose reminiscent of her working class origins.

Another son, who worked his way through high school into top management of a private manufacturing company, resented when the owners sons were given differential treatment although not as knowledgeable, ending the association. He is now an independent businessman doing well, but ironically, shows his wrath by looking and acting like a Florida cracker. Due to his astuteness, however, he was not touched by the economic meltdown.

Another daughter has never caught hold, and has been supported by the other three in ways that have been counterproductive to her establishing self-reliance.

Only my stepdaughter has risen to the challenge as I did in my day, and the only college graduate.

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AMERICA, MANFRED, IS NOT EUROPE

Now, my grandchildren, some thirteen of them, from the ages of two to thirty-two have the disposition and acculturating experience, as well as the expectations of reaching – if they haven’t already – the upper echelons of American social and economic society, a society I have no interest in joining.

My extended family – cousins and their siblings – remind me of author William Faulkner’s Scopes of fictional Yoknapatawpha County (Mississippi).

In Faulkner’s fiction, the Scopes start out as tenant farmers and end up running the county.

What is different about my extended family, and something I cherish, is that it is not ostentatious about its power or wealth but quietly and inconspicuously controls things. Likewise, my extended family finds pride in its working class roots and is unapologetic about them.

One thing my extended family has in common with my family, however, is a palpable enmity to academia and intellectualism, as if bookish people are non-doers. They tolerate me but are not certain what I am about.

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Moving from the personal to the public forum, America differs from Europe in another way.

France has had weeks of riots with tens of thousands of people entering the streets, going on strike, and disrupting commerce at its government’s austerity move to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62.

A Congressional Committee now is considering increasing the retirement age in the United States from 65 to 68 and there is hardly a ripple of protest.

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Great Britain proposes increasing university education from four thousand British pounds ($6,400) per year to ten British thousand pounds ($16,000), or a 250 percent increase. Tens of thousands entered the streets of London recently in protest, destroying property and causing personal injury to police and students alike.

Were such a proposal made in the United States, it would shut down higher education totally, and I mean totally.

The Florida’s state university system is increasing tuition some 10 percent and there has been protest, but nothing compared to that in Europe. Ten percent is not 250 percent.

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This same Congressional Committee is advocating reducing the benefits of Social Security, reducing the mortgage exemption interest on Federal Income Taxes, increasing the amount retired persons on Medicare and Medicaid pay for treatment and prescription medications, and there has been nary a protest.

You see, in the American system, the process is decidedly cumbersome, time consuming and bureaucratic on purpose.

Before these recommendations go anywhere, they must past muster of a Committee of Fourteen before it can be presented to the House of Representatives, then it has to go through the US Senate, and then it has to convince the president not to veto the proposed legislation.

Along the way, it will change many times and be nothing like what was originally proposed, and even then, it will take years to reach its full fruition.

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You play funny with the American electorate and you awake a sleepy lion. I will end this with a quote from Susan Jacoby’s “Freethinkers” (2004) that summarizes what I’ve attempted to convey here :

“When your own mind is your own church, it can take a very long time for future generations to make their way to the sanctuary.”

Be always well,

Jim