RETREAT FROM ADULTHOOD -- INTRODUCTION

 RETREAT FROM ADULTHOOD – INTRODUCTION

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 22, 2011

The announcement of this topic has brought some interesting responses.  It is apparent I am not alone in thinking about this topic.  At some point in this exchange, a montage of these responses will be presented.

Adulthood, it would seem, is something we avoid as long as possible.  Most of human history has not had the luxury of such avoidance. 

Slave labor exists in India and China, two emerging great powers of the twenty-first century.  A minority segment of the population is exploited by the majority because it can.  This was largely true in the Americas after Columbus from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century.  Tell people there they could escape adulthood, or the reality of day-to-day survival, and they would think you mad. 

In periods of boom, there is a tectonic shift to adolescence and self-indulgence, that is, until society is put against the wall, collapses in disarray, forcing it to fight for survival through correction.  It happened in the heydays of the Roman Empire, the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church, the rise and then fall of the British Empire, and now the United States is in this configuration. 

The American Civil War was followed by insouciant affluence with an explosive retreat from adulthood in the Gay Nineties.  This led to the Great Depression of the 1880's.  A cavalier disregard for lessons learned after this collapse resulted in World War One.  The “Roaring Twenties” and wild speculation was eclipsed with the Great Depression of the 1930's.  And so it continues into the twenty-first century.

Responsible adulthood is the court of last resort.  People kick and complain, riot and rebel, and blame everyone but themselves for economic and social collapse.  Portugal, Ireland, and Greece stagger like drunken sailors to gain some purchase, failing to realize Europe has been living in the surreal world of economic fantasy.  

Meanwhile, the United States has been playing with funny money during these early days of the twenty-first century, resulting in the real estate collapse and Wall Street fraud and bankruptcy.  This has required a $trillion government bailout of these institutions and the automotive industry.  The adult is nowhere in sight. 

The family has collapsed with sixty percent of newborn children likely to be born out of wedlock; with twenty percent born to parents not siblings of the couple, of between 14 and 20 million unemployed or underemployed workers because of a lack of adult leadership in government and industry, of children inventing social distractions such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter to fill the vacuum left by a retreat from social engagement.  There is a mania to be somebody, some type of celebrity, rather than to do something worthwhile.  Major religions sabotage each other rather than see a common design. 

The adult has no choice but to surface as we are moving dangerously close to the abyss.

Suicide, homicide and genocide have resulted in hundreds of millions perishing in the last century.  We are forced to realize that cooperation and competition are polar coordinates.  Will we get it? 

SOJOURN OF A SCRIBBLER

Adulthood is the consistent theme in my books.

CONFIDENT SELLING (1970) is about self-acceptance, coming to terms with oneself before worrying about persuading someone else to find you of value.  Once you cross that bridge, confidence is the product of the journey.

WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990) is a systematic unraveling of how workers have given up control of work for pay and benefits, not realizing self-hate and alienation would come to fill this vacuum.  As a consequence, workers have gone from the culture of comfort and management dependent (PARENT) to the culture of complacency mired in arrested development and terminal adolescence (CHILD) at the price of the culture of contribution and interdependence (ADULT).  Virtually all the book’s warnings have reached fruition.

CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) is a touchstone to the development of partnerships at the personal, professional and social level rather than adversarial ones.  It doesn’t deny the adversarial or the necessity of conflict in the conduct of life, but provides a formula for managing such encounters.  It claims managed conflict, not harmony, is the glue that holds an organization on task.

THE WORKERS, ALONE (1995) is directed at professionals trained to lead, but who would prefer to collect their salaries and bonuses, and leave the driving to someone else.  It shows the retreat from negative freedom, which is actual freedom, to positive freedom where conditions and stipulations prove freedom a myth.  BIG BROTHER was the theme of 1984 (1948) by George Orwell, a work of fiction that has come to past as a reality. 

THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996) was a commentary on how our lives have become so other-directed that inner-direction has essentially vanished.  The last person we trust is ourselves.  We seek the opinion of others rather than trust our experience.  The book echoes the sentiment, "To have a friend, you must be a friend, starting with yourself." 

SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998) is directed at CEO’s and senior management demonstrating how juvenile and masochistic the best trained people are likely to be, costing the corporation $billions.  Such behavior is difficult to detect because it is largely invisible.  These silent killers were the greatest challenge of management in the last century, and now in the twenty-first century.

CORPORATE SIN (2000) places the blame for this retreat from responsible and accountable corporate behavior to leaderless leadership and dissonant workers.  Leaders worry only about creating good numbers during their watch, while workers constantly sabotage their own efforts to be productive.  A blueprint for correction is offered.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003) is a personal memoir in novel form to show those born during the Great Depression growing up during rationing and self-sacrifice during World War Two developed adult characteristics by default.  They then did everything to see that their children were not to suffer such deprivation, resulting in sixty years of baby boomer adolescence.

A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007) illustrates our chronic inclination to repeat in perpetuity to the same problematic behaviors.  From the 1970s on, the theme has never changed: unpopular wars, political upheavals, corrupt politicians unmasked, electorate deceived (Watergate), drug wars fighting a losing battle with drug addiction, automotive industry in sharp decline, morality on holiday, new hatreds hatching, energy prices beholden to the whim of OPEC, paranoid presidents hunkering down, becoming a law unto themselves, Congress staying the same, missing the changes, unwilling to face them, leaving the future up for grabs.   The book attempts to breakthrough our cool façade, canned rhetoric, mania of insiders, always looking to science to find the magic bullet to cure all its ills.

These books were written as a reflection of a declining adult constituency, books that may resurface in a hundred years to show how we lost our moral compass and thus our way.

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