James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 17, 2011
At one point in my life, all of these were answers, but now when over 300 are on my everyday email address book that is not possible. Then there is the fact that I am getting long in the tooth. I do respect all the comments and relish reading them.
It always surprises me when people read these long missives and still have the energy to give feedback. As I have repeated, I am not looking for converts to my point of view. My interest is in telling stories that may have some relevance to the times. Such is the case with "Profiles of the Leader-as-Artist."
Rereading Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People without College Degrees (1995) and The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning (2004) by Charles D. Hayes, I thought of these profiles. Retrieving the missive from my archives, I put it on my website (http://www.theperipateticphilosopher.com/) and blog, then sent it to you.
These books are all about self-university and the didact, or the self-learner. The men profiled in my missive were all students of this philosophy if some have not been around for five centuries. Hayes has a remarkable understanding of the temper of our times. Give his work a look. You won't regret it.
Another factor that found me going back to my original 2004 missive was the death of Steven Jobs, the quintessential self-learner. Then I realized all those profiled fit that mode.
Invitations come to me on a regular basis to submit a paper for peer review and possible inclusion in scholarly journals; specialists, I suspect, only read thee instruments. I don’t consider myself a specialist. .
In any case, MODERN ECONOMY is one such journal. It would like to consider my work for the Journal of Service Science and Management or the Journal of Intelligent Learning Systems and Applications. Perhaps these profiles would fit. Stay tuned.
After publishing in trade journals and popular periodicals for years, including The Reader's Digest, I decided to limit my missives to emails and my blog. A journal published a missive of mine some time ago without permission. It was published with my byline, but skipped the step of asking permission. This offended me. It was a matter of principle, which, incidentally, is the reason for this brief missive.
BB and I watched A Man For All Seasons (1966 film) last Saturday, starring Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More. I have written about Sir Thomas as well as his best friend, the Rotterdam priest and Catholic scholar, Desiderius Erasmus. Sir Thomas wrote Utopia (1516), his idea of an ideal society, and Erasmus wrote The Praise of Folly (1511), his take on the vanities of men of his time, and the limitations of convention on human experience, problems we still face today.
The two men illustrate aspects of what I call "a matter of principle."
Principles with Sir Thomas were palpable, less so with Erasmus. Erasmus hid his behind clever words, publishing his book surreptitiously and anonymously. This brings me to playwright Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons."
Sir Thomas More was an English statesman and friend of King Henry VIII, who wanted to divorce his wife and marry Ann Boleyn. More’s refusal to accept the divorce and the king’s remarriage, or to acknowledge the king as head of the Church of England, cost him his head.
His allegiance, on principle, was to the Vatican, the Papacy, and the Roman Catholic Church. He could not forsake his conscience, his God or his church. Remember this was the time of the Protestant Reformation in which all of Europe was on the brink of a radical paradigm shift, again somewhat like our time.
Once the film was over, I turned to BB and said, "Honey, what is really sad about this film is that Taylor, Ryan and Rachel would have no idea what all the fuss was about." Ryan, 17, Rachel, 15, and Taylor, 19 are our grandchildren.
She looked at me and nodded. "No, it wouldn't make any sense at all to them."
Indeed, Sir Thomas More sacrificed life, limb and family for principle, an idea that has lost its energy today.
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