FLATLINING INTO THE FUTURE – COMMENTS & RESPONSE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 12, 2012
A WRITER WRITES:
Jim,
Well said and the last four paragraphs are the best writing I have seen from you in awhile.
I haven't read Hoffer, but must as I have noted that, for me at least, some of your clearest writings over time have been those associated with references to him.
My view of the problem for leaders, or would be leaders, that exists today as a result of all the intrusiveness you spoke of is this: in order to have heroes (the leader is always your potential hero) you must see the person in gross relief only. For example, if you know of the one shining hour he spent in some rabbit warren of huts in some misery hole on the other side of the world where he earned the right to wear the Medal of Honor a soldier is a hero, but if you know also of his womanizing, boozing, and anger management issues both before and after that hour it is hard to retain an heroic view of him; especially when that bit of heroics occurred in a conflict to which you were morally opposed.
The process our would be leaders must go through to get the job today, largely because of the intrusiveness technology makes possible, so dirties or blemishes them with the details of their imperfections that they lose the ability to be our hoped for untarnished heroes. Hence we are routinely reduced to choosing for our leaders those we find least obnoxious and that makes it hard to see them as real leaders. To put perspective on it, how many folks do you suppose voted for FDR all four times and still did not know that he used a wheelchair? How many who voted for him would not have had his invalid status been used as fodder 24/7 to question his ability to lead?
Take care,
Well said and the last four paragraphs are the best writing I have seen from you in awhile.
I haven't read Hoffer, but must as I have noted that, for me at least, some of your clearest writings over time have been those associated with references to him.
My view of the problem for leaders, or would be leaders, that exists today as a result of all the intrusiveness you spoke of is this: in order to have heroes (the leader is always your potential hero) you must see the person in gross relief only. For example, if you know of the one shining hour he spent in some rabbit warren of huts in some misery hole on the other side of the world where he earned the right to wear the Medal of Honor a soldier is a hero, but if you know also of his womanizing, boozing, and anger management issues both before and after that hour it is hard to retain an heroic view of him; especially when that bit of heroics occurred in a conflict to which you were morally opposed.
The process our would be leaders must go through to get the job today, largely because of the intrusiveness technology makes possible, so dirties or blemishes them with the details of their imperfections that they lose the ability to be our hoped for untarnished heroes. Hence we are routinely reduced to choosing for our leaders those we find least obnoxious and that makes it hard to see them as real leaders. To put perspective on it, how many folks do you suppose voted for FDR all four times and still did not know that he used a wheelchair? How many who voted for him would not have had his invalid status been used as fodder 24/7 to question his ability to lead?
Take care,
Ted
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Ted,
For readers of my missives, I would inform them that you are a retired Colonel in the United States Army, and know a thing or two about command and leadership.
That said author Charles D. Hayes of Alaska has, on occasion, compared my writing to Eric Hoffer, and so I take the mantle of working class philosopher with a degree of humility.
Some respondents were puzzled with my closing comment of this piece: We behave like puppets on a string with the puppet master a puppet as well. To clarify this declarative statement, I have added to this missive on my blog: Nobody is in charge. Events control the day.
We have the benefit of biographies today on such heroes of our times as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his First Lady, the eminent Eleanor Roosevelt in which it is reported that the president had an affair with the First Lady’s secretary, and she had a lesbian affair herself. Imagine how that would be exploited today.
Moreover, Democratic presidential candidate Wendell Willkie campaigned across the United States in 1940 with his mistress. Not a word of that fact was mentioned in the newspapers of the time, although the campaign was not otherwise unblemished with dirty politics.
There was apparently a code among journalists of the day that has been lost over time. Yellow journalism, so called, seemingly has gone to bed with the scandal magazines at the checkout counters of supermarkets with no apparent palpable disgust.
Human beings, heroes included as you point out, are interesting because, not in the absence of their human foibles.
We have a straightjacket president that is seemingly above reproach, who lacks the common touch, and who will most likely be opposed by a Republican straightjacket candidate, who also lacks that common touch, or two Harvard wonks that have little in common with any of us, and yet are expected to lead us to the promise land, which are jobs.
We made a terrible mistake after World War Two when we sacrificed individualism for collective self-esteem, when the best students in lower grades were all treated as equally gifted, when that was never the case, then or now, when we abandoned the idea of elitism to a dumbing down process with the focus on flaws in those that excelled as a way to cut them down to size, rather than using these models as inspiration to climb the steep curve to excellence.
We have had more than a half-century of this programming, and now are saddled with the product, which is, in my view, “leaderless leaders” in virtually all walks of life, all disciplines from education to commerce, from religion to industry, from music to literature, from science to philosophy.
We have descended to a celebrity culture, which, hopefully, is dying the death of satiety. This is not a new harangue on my part. On January 1, 1976, this caption was on the front page of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, “America is dead! Long live America!” with my essay featured on the editorial page in a more extended form:
America is dead! Long live America! . . . On the eve of our 200th birthday, we have been shocked awake from our illusory dream. We have discovered belatedly that success is in the mind and not the body politic; that being Numero Uno is reaching after a child’s fantasy; that progress carries the seeds of its own destruction. . . America remains like a child. And like a child, the focus of America’s existence has always been on becoming, rather than on being; on the competitive drive rather than on cooperation; on the illusion of progress rather than on reality . . . But alas! Thanks to a decade of corrupt and incompetent leadership, the wasting of our natural resources, the impatience of youth, and discriminated minorities, the dream has died . . . And in doing so . . . we have embraced despair . . . we will not grow up. Thus, on the eve of our 200th birthday, we are in a mourning period for our cherished illusions and protected fantasies . . . In the end, time runs out on a nation’s adolescence. The youth must die to give birth to the man. That is why I proclaim, America is dead! Long live America!
This piece appeared in this abbreviated form in “Work Without Managers” (1990) and again in “Six Silent Killers” (1998). It was repeated in these two works as I am still waiting for us to turn that corner.
Be always well, and Ted, may you and Mary have a wonderful New Year,
Jim
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