SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 3, 2013
REFERENCE:
There is a theory that “six degrees of separation,” the idea that everyone is approximately six or fewer steps away by way of introduction from any other person in the world, so that a chain of a friend of a friend statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized by a play written by John Guare.
Dr. Donald Farr and I grew up in the same small city of Clinton, Iowa (33,000) going to different public high schools and different state universities in Iowa but never meeting. Our careers, although different, indicate a movement from the physical to the social sciences in something approaching lockstep.
Along the way, I wrote a book (Work Without Managers) living in Florida and got a note from an auhtor in New York City, William L. Livingston IV, who had seen the book at a book fair, and wrote, “Send me your book and I’ll send you mine (The New Plague).”
That established a twenty-two year personal and professional relationship. Here is where the “six degrees of separation” get interesting.
Dr. Don taught human engineering in design for years and lectured at CSUN, and helped form the Human Factors Society back in the 1950s. He worked in Aerospace (weapon systems and on space vehicles including the first space shuttle at NASA). He also worked on commercial nuclear power (redesign of control rooms), commercial product designs and system safety designs, buidling flow block diagrams and providing detailed failure analysis reports.
As you will see, while Don Farr and I assumed similar careers, Bill Livingston was in the process of doing this as well perfecting his Design for Prevention book. Even more incredible, he has a connection to Don Farr in nuclear research but without the two ever having met.
In a previous missive, I wrote about the masculine (left) and feminine (right) brain and how they complement each other with a preference in the left brain for rational determinism as opposed to a penchant of the right brain for irrational unpredictability.
Scientists, such as Dr. Donald Farr and William Livingston, have seen the merits of marrying the two sides of the brain to a common cause. Rita, the writer here, is a student of the occult and a systematic thinker in the meditative life. I am not, but have dabbled in these areas. It is for that reason why I respond to her as I do
* * *
A READER WRITES:
Drs. Don & Jim,
Do note, with interest, your communication of participation. Don, your work most notable, and both you and Jim contribute to the beneficence of mankind. Jim, your expression makes impression.
Don, appreciate your sharing about past, present work and whatever new endeavor you select. So essential to keep the mind busy.......It helps the memory process. Yes, every individual has the feminine and masculine side within them.... Female known as the "Magnetic Pole' .... the Male known as the 'Electric Pole'.
And, speaking of poles, I am not doing any 'pole dancing' tonight... (Haha....just wanted to know if you are still reading my e-mails?)
Jim, you mentioned the book 'Bhagavad-Gita.' I study this book on daily basis. Call it 'Rita's Gita'. Excellent material. Have several metaphysical books that I embrace.
Jim, what other metaphysical books do you study? Do keep all my metaphysical books in special place...... quickly accessible. I am not a lover of fiction, always appreciate fact. Know many women do enjoy reading novels, but I prefer substance. However, diversification always appreciated. Voice of Choice always in style.
Don and Jim, you gentlemen could be called 'Parallel Pals' with congenial circuitry.
Always enjoy reading your missives. Been another Wonderful Wednesday
Happy New Year to You and Yours,
Always,
Rita
* * *
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Rita,
First of all, Happy New Year to you, too. You make all of us happier.
You are quite perceptive in saying Don and I are “parallel pals” with congenial circuitry.
We have never met but thanks to this medium have gotten to know each other. Often, I have written about another friend, William L. Livingston IV, whom I have met and have had a close relationship over the past several years. He is a fellow author of several books, and like Dr. Don, a quintessential engineer, as well as a student of human nature and natural law. Livingston writes to me:
“Sir James: FYI, Farr and I go back to the TMI nuclear aftermath when human factors become big plant operations. He was prominent then in the HF (human factor) field. I’m not sure we ever met but we were preaching to the same choir at the same events.”
Livingston built nuclear power plants in such places as Korea. Trained in science, he came to appreciate the daunting impact of human factors. He continues:
“My view is that the sciences, hard or soft, are constrained by the same institutional proclivities, enforced by natural law I yammer about. There is the dude, like Farr, who is one dude in a setting like this and another dude when he is doing HF society stuff.”
This acknowledges the special person Dr. Don is, a person who wears many hats with the acumen of science and humanity’s touch to do what he does so splendidly well.
I go on about my humble beginnings failing to note that Dr. Don grew up in similar circumstances losing his father quite young. He took a circuitous route to his achievements always helping people along the way. The behavioral side of enterprise can be more demanding than pursuing the laws of science. Livingston continues:
“Otherwise, I find the soft science institutions to be more brutal than the hard ones. Look how they treated you.”
He is referring to my constant war with academics, which was similar to my war with the corporation and corpocracy. Author Charles D. Hayes in “The Rapture of Maturity” (2004), a book I recommend everyone read, writes perceptively about my inclination:
“Life is full of contradictions. James R. Fisher, Jr. provides an interesting example. He is an expert on organizational psychology but has never found an organization where he fit in.”
This brings this “outsider-insider” (me) to your question of metaphysics. Since returning from South Africa in 1969, you could say I have made an eclectic spiritual journey to apprehend my spiritual side so as to balance with my material side.
I am not a student, per se, of metaphysics as you are, although I have read widely on the periphery if not the core of this discipline. Being born and reared Irish Roman Catholic Christian, I have read many of the works of scholars of the early church (they are not mentioned here), and have an extensive library on that subject, alone.
Being trained in both the hard and soft sciences, many writers in those disciplines have also flirted with metaphysics to a greater or lesser degree. In my more than 4,000 book collection, I suspect I have a minimum of 500 books on this and related matters. This has made me neither wise nor especially informed.
Readers of my blog have told me (mainly respondents from other countries) that the mystical influence in my writing is apparent. For the curious, I will list books that I have read commencing in my teens to the present. Again, these referenced works are listed in no special order of influence:
(1) Works of Aldous Huxley including “Brave New World,” and “Point Counterpoint.”
(2) Works of Alexis Carrel including “Man, the Unknown,” and “Reflections on Life.”
(3) “The Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self” by Robert Eliot Fitch
(4) All the published works of Kahlil Gibran including “The Prophet” and “The Madman.”
(5) All the published works of Krishnamurti including “You are the World” and “Think on these Things.”
(6) Most of Gurdjieff’s works including “All and Everything” and “Meetings with Remarkable Men.”
(7) “Power of Will” by Frank Channing Haddock.
(8) “The Mythic Imagination” by Stephen Larsen
(9) “Going Home – Jesus & Buddha as Brothers” by Thich Nhat Hanh.
(10) The Philosophy of Humanism by Corliss Lamont.
(11) “Teachings of Buddha” by B.D.K.
(12) Several works of C.S. Lewis including “God in the Dock” and “Abolition of Man.”
(13) Several works of Michael Novak including “The Experience of Nothingness” and “Ascent of the Mountain Flight of the Dove.”
(14) “Human Destiny” by Lecomte du Nouy.
(15) Works of James Redfield including “The Celestine Vision” and “The Tenth Insight.”
(16) “Christ” by Edward Schillebeeckx.
(17) “The Unconscious Civilization” by John Ralston Saul.
(18) “The Amazing Secrets of the Masters” by Robert Collier.
(19) “The First Secret” by Lao Tze, “The Second Secret” by J. B. Priestley, “The Third Secret” by Alfred North Whitehead, “The Fourth Secret” by Michelangelo, “The Fifth Secret” by Buddha, “The Sixth Secret” by Buddha, and “The Seventh Secret” by Montesquieu.
(20) “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a’ Kempis.
(21) Several works by Joseph Campbell including “Mythical Image” and “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.”
(22) Several works by Fritzof Capra including “The Tao of Physics” and “The Turning Point.”
(23) “Awakening the Buddha Within” by Lami Surya Das.
(24) “The Wisdom of Eck” by Paul Twitchell.
(25) “Ego & Archetype” by C. G. Jung.
(26) All of P. D. Ouspe4nsky including “Tertium Organum” and “In Search of the Miraculous” and “The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.”
(27) “Radhakrishnan: The Man and his Thought” by S. J. Samartha.
(28) All of Alan W. Watts including “The Book” and “Does it Matter?” and “The Wisdom of Insecurity.”
(29) “Flesh of Reason” by Roy Porter.
(30) “The Heresy of Self-Love” by Paul Zweig.
(31) “Existentialism” by Patricia F. Sanborn.
(32) Most of Jean Paul Sartre including “The Word” and “Situations.”
(33) “Animal Faith and Spiritual Life” by Santayana.
(34) Vedanta or Hindu Upanishads.
(35) The Jewish “Torah.”
(36) “Collectio Rituum” of Roman Catholicism.
(37) “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po.”
(38) “The Seat of the Soul” by Gary Zukav.
Reading perhaps more than meditation has been my sanctuary (actually, its a form of prayer). I find all these creative wonderers reducing their thoughts to print with validation and/or refutation of cherished beliefs. Perhaps it could be no other way as they have the same intellectual equipment we all have.
When I came back from South Africa in 1969, I was a very disturbed young man and took the drastic step of retiring. I found sanctuary at the Haslam Book Store in St. Petersburg, Florida where I spent many hours of many days over a two year period doing little else in a self-imposed sabbatical (1969-1971) then reading books, playing tennis and teaching myself how to write, publishing one book (Confident Selling Prentice-Hall 1971).
After South Africa, I choose my life to be one of continuous surprise. The only thing that has been orderly has been in pursuit of becoming a writer. Otherwise, it has been a roll of the dice.
I believe I wanted to be a writer since a little boy because it was a way to take me out of myself in language, while at the same time registering a modicum of control. I never worried about the lack of talent. I couldn’t be discouraged even by a da who said I couldn’t write a good letter.
In a strange way, I have never worried much about what other people thought about me, only what I thought about them. If I liked them, and they hated me, it made no matter. Nor if they liked me, and I disliked them, it made no matter.
This gave me an amazing degree of freedom, which became my form of meditation. It is how I happen to write that poem at the beginning of “In the Shadow of the Courthouse,” which I sense was first composed in my head when I was about five-years-old but did not find the language of fruition to express it until I was middle aged. For those not familiar with the poem, it follows:
“I have never lost my affection for this edifice (The Clinton County Courthouse). It was like a parent that never wavered, never changed. I am sitting here now, reflecting on the fact that it is forty-five years since I have spent any time with my old friend.
“If I were a poet, I would give it metaphorical significance, like a giant knight, standing ever at attention to protect my neighborhood from itself and from the dangers outside.
“If I were a poet, I would see it as a Greek god, an Adonis, a Zeus, a mighty warrior who never falters from its vigilance.
“If I were a poet, I would sing the praise of this frozen music, this enchanting melody which never varies in my head, this quiet dignity, this sculptured perfection, this sensible grace as common as a pair of old shoes.
“If I were a poet, I would wonder why we could have such stability, such reasoned continence against the harsh reality of tumultuous change, as it has not varied for me one iota from what it was a half century ago.
“If I were a poet, I would remark that the tower and the time and the psychology of its movement is frozen like magic so that wherever I go it is stop time to my mind.
“If I were a poet, I would tell the world that it has been so important in making this fumbling, stumbling, bumbling individual, called “me,” to always feel a mystical anchor to my roots of being.
“If I were a poet, I would exalt its unique character with Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons” to dramatize how the earth around may change, but the spirit within remains forever constant.
“If I were a poet, I would note that men live and die, but that this structure is immortal because it exists beyond nature.
“If I were a poet, I would sit here and wonder as I am now, over the happiness I feel for having the opportunity to once again ponder the regard I hold for it. And finally
“If I were a poet, I would want the world to know of the many lives that this edifice, this sentinel has influenced in the course of my fleeting life. How many young who are now old have been given succor and sustenance, and semblance of order in their lives because they have lived In the Shadow of the Courthouse.” © James R. Fisher, Jr., 1995.
Be always well,
Jim
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment