SPIRITED EXCHANGE OVER "THINKING ABOUT THE WEIRDNESS OF THE TIMES"

SPIRITED EXCHANGE OVER

“THINKING ABOUT THE WEIRDNESS OF THE TIMES”

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

© September 30, 2014

NOTE:

This is typical of the exchanges I receive.  It is refreshingly spirited and my reason for sharing.  The reader is responding to this particular missive.

A READER WRITES:

Your use of the word "Solipsistic" in referring to Franklin Roosevelt sent my mind searching for that man you describe.  Does that come close to "...you are what you think?"    

And as to Stalin, my husband, Mark, and I have had many a conservation on that subject. 

Had Stalin stayed out of WWII, what then?  The lives of millions of Russians were lost, granted many lost by Stalin's scorched the earth policy, keeping the Germans at bay as well as his own imagined enemies, but all the same lost. 

The Russians were still fighting their own civil awareness, who failed who? What was to be done? 

Sort of comes full circle each time the world feels the mouth of cruelty nipping at our heels.        

We, the human race, are ever evolving, those who promote the flattening of the world know not what they do...gives one a huge headache attempting to wrap one’s mind around the whole.    

You touched on a box full of turmoil, not one thought but many...a relief to look out the window behind the computer screen and view the shadows of evening tide sinking over the hill across the creek. 

I have the luxury to absorb nature when my being needs a rest from the eternal "race" we humankind dare immerse our thoughts, sinking our teeth into a subject and not liking the taste.         

Thank you for providing another thought provoking challenge...you have given us an insight, leading to an examination akin to "Who do you think you are?"  

All that you do, all that you see, you are.   

You do have the talent to turn us aside for new views, like the book of a decade ago, "Looking Away and Seeing Too Much."

It was another beautiful day in the Midwest...afraid I sat on the patio and planned iris gardens and was entertained by trumpeting goldfinches, the blue jays and squirrels fighting again in the front lawn over acorns, the blue heron spearing frogs near the creek, walnuts dropping with a splash into the creek, others rolling down the hillside adding new sounds to a country day as they crashed into dried leafs, the two cats at my feet soaking in the sunshine providing warmth as I pat their luxurious coats.  

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Thank you for your levity and insight.  Nature is a balm that you know so well and describe with much affection.

Someone else wrote me about this piece.

The reader commented that presidents are only human, which they are.  The reader also was correct in saying that whomever they are they are most likely to come in for a bucket of criticism. 

We are often quite divided in such criticism when it comes to our leaders.  That is with the exception of Adolf Hitler.  He is clearly evil with no redeeming value in most people's eyes.  

The humanity of Hitler is difficult for most people to digest, yet he was in fact a human being.

Were you to be perusing my study, with all the volumes I have on Hitler about all aspects of his life and personality, you might think I am a Hitler scholar, which clearly I am not.

Hitler has fascinated me since I was a boy.  Despite his dastardly deeds politicians ever since the world over have followed the boilerplate that he invented in his rise to power in Germany, one of the most sophisticated nations in the history of man. 

How was that possible, it is fair to ask?  Hitler was a poorly educated man, an aspiring but failed artist, a roustabout, unfocused, lazy, a dubious malcontent until he found a role for himself as soldier in WWI, after which he became an often ineffective political activist.

Yet, he would rise to power, and at one point, have the world quaking at his knees.  His rise says as much about Western culture and us as it does about him, and for reason.

Were I a younger man I would write a book on how sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and political scientists misread leadership in the 20th century, which is now being compounded in the 21st, a leadership that Hitler mainly invented.

Clearly, leadership in the post-modern world has a debt to pay to Hitler for he discovered what works in a technological society that operates mainly unconsciously and passively, as it is at once provoked and distracted by meteoric change. 

Hitler's madness, according to Nassir Ghaemi in "A First-Rate Madness" (2011), has been on display from Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Gandhi, FDR, JFK, and such corporate types as Ted Turner. 

Ghaemi claims "thinking outside the box" is predicated on this madness. 

In contrast, he points out that Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain appeased Hitler at Munich in 1939, while General George McClellan, who was Lincoln's Civil War Military Commander, refused to fight. 

What Ghaemi sees these two men had in common is that they were actually quite normal.  We might add George W. Bush, if not also his father, and Barak Obama.  Normality is the antithesis of spirited leadership in times of crisis.

. 

I don't think Obama understands this, indeed, I don't think George Bush did despite his preemptive invasion of Iraq after 9/11 in 2003.  Alas, my wonder if any of those vying for the next presidency do.

Read Henry Kissinger who clearly understands (re: "World Order," 2014).  Kissinger blames George W. Bush and his administration for pursuing idealistic crusades that ignored earthly reality.  The earthly reality that Lincoln understood.  Kissinger states that America’s idealism is necessary to be true to itself, but “to be effective, these aspirational aspects of policy must be paired with unsentimental analysis of underlying factors.”  To put it bluntly, leadership in crisis must do what it must do to protect its sovereignty.   

Lincoln did negating constitutional liberties and assuming the authority of the War Powers Act to save the nation, as other "madmen" designates of author Ghaemi did in their time of crisis. 

Sometimes such solipsism goes awry -- a word you seem fond to note from my piece – finding them ignorant of the facts while imposing their will as if the world revolved around them, and that is when they misstep. 

Relating this to common experience, it can kill the efficacy of a player or a team in sport and it certainly can cause a nation to go reeling when it is displayed by the national leadership.

Whether the West would have won World War Two, or not without Russia seems a moot point. 

Hitler wanted Poland without having to invade the country, or fight Russia for it, so Germany signed a "German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact" on August 23, 1939 with each country promising not to fight the other for ten years.

A week later on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and WWII was underway.

The German Nonaggression Pact with the Soviet Union lasted until June 22, 1941 when Germany's "Operation Barbarossa" was launched against Russia.  It proved Hitler's albatross.

The Soviet Union had no choice but to fight.  Remember, the United States didn't enter the war until after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941.

What I'm trying to say in all my writing is that we cannot cast stones at a few people whom we choose to lead us and then think our hands our clean.  They reflect us and we reflect them.  Leaders and followers are not discrete groups but part of the same homogeneity.  Therefore, we must be as committed to each other as any two people are in marriage.

Good to hear from you allowing your body and mind to breathe the aroma of nature with a light heart.

THE READER RESPONDS:

You can't be serious!  You endorse the W (President George Bush) years as his own???

You don’t see it as a power play by his gang of idiots with Dick Cheney (Vice President) the heavy? 

Yes, they did shadow Hitler’s maneuvers...threatening the people (used collectively) with the levels of terror on a color coded scale, leading us to the edge of martial law.

The Oz speaks the fiction, "Weapons of Mass Destruction," exposing the CIA agent Valerie Plame and God only knows at what cost to national security.

True, each leader has his foibles.  There was President Clinton and his crotch fantasies along with a few others.  The sad truth is that an insufficient quorum of statesmen are left.  Seemingly, many are out for the triple score, be it a Congressman or Senator, President or Vice President, looking for the money pot or power or both.

I have always been and remain an Independent as a voter, never voted for Obama, believe deeply that we need more political parties and a total rewrite of history but that would be something only Douglas Brinkley could handle. 

Yes, I do agree, to remain mired in the murky side of things becomes one boring vortex.  Life is far more interesting than the government’s acerbic side.  Eventually it reeks, like another Clinton Presidency would!  Am I showing my hand?

When will our youngsters come to the fore and start shining through? 

A Paul Ryan is on the wrong track, far too reactionary, like the governor of Wisconsin...a walk on the money side.  He had the whole of the Republican Party's Labor departments across the nation helping break municipal unions, not that some shouldn't be broken, when it comes to the cronyism. 

Where did that thought go?  Where should it?   

Just to get at the idea that for some reason a union has become an unsavory device.  Can you imagine that?

The hour is late, Mark has surgery in the am and bed bids us sleep to enable a worried wife to be comforting and supportive on the morrow. 

Good night...

DR. FISHER RESPONDS TO COMMENTS OF READER:

This is beautiful!  Doesn't it feel great when you get all this out?  I love it.  Good luck to your Mark.  A mind with its own opinions intact is a beautiful mind!  Ironically, our opinions are much more valuable than our arguments.  They put us in touch with our soul.  Thank you for sharing.

THE READER RESPONDS TO THIS:

Dear Dr. Fisher,

I love reading your writings.  And yes, it does feel good to rant and relieve the innards of the nasty tastes of this world...had I a mountain top I would be there hooting and hollering to the heavens.     

I have my grandparents' picture of FDR, most likely very similar to your folks', stored safely on the bottom of a linen drawer, the drawer below holds a fanciful General Pershing, hero of WWI.    

It hurts to think where will our treasure trove of books go when we are gone...those good friends we value as jewels.  Do you have Sandburg's Lincoln volumes?  I’m sure you do. 

The nasty politics then make today's pale in content and context.

I suggested once to a friend that she only needed to digest the political volumes written trashing our political heroes through time to ease her mind of today's pundits' mud.  Goes back to Andrew Jackson and beyond.    

Headed for bed and a couple chapters of reading.  Be well, good friend, and again love your writings, never stop...

FINAL NOTE:

People about the globe may not be able to relate to the particulars here, but they as part of our common humanity and know such sentiments first hand in their own right, and can translate them I’m sure to their own with ease.

*     *     *

THINKING ABOUT THE WEIRDNESS OF THE TIMES! Conjugate the absurd with the ridiculous and you produce the boring!

THINKING ABOUT WEIRDNESS OF THE TIMES!

Conjugate the absurd with the ridiculous and you produce the boring!

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

© September 28, 2014

NOTE TO READERS:

I hastily posted this in a slightly different form.  Please accept my apologies as I've deleted the original.

It is truly a strange time when people are so hypersensitive to what is normal -- incessantly talking about nothing on a cell or smartphone -- that communication was bound to prove tedious.

At Christmas time if you slip and wish someone a “Merry Christmas,” you panic, and quickly correct yourself to say “Happy Holiday.”  

A National Basketball Association (NBA) owner makes racial remarks about African American basketball players in the privacy of his home in the company of his girlfriend, who records the conversation then makes it public, a girlfriend half his age upon whom he has showered gifts costing in the millions, and for this he loses his NBA franchise and is banned from the sport for life.

A general manager of another NBA franchise shares an e-mail with racial content with some other NBA owner over the phone, and he is likely to lose his job.

You can get into trouble referring to a woman as a girl, forgetting the differentiation between “Ms.” and “Mrs.”

National Football League (NFL) athletes have always trash talked to each other in the spirit of the game.  Now, they can be fined and their teams penalized for the use of the “n” word ending in a hard “er” or “a.”  

In my walks through the neighborhood, I often pass an elementary school when the students are leaving school for the day. 

I hear girls as well as boys, blacks as well as whites shouting at each other with the “f” word or its compound variety of “m-f,” and then laugh as if it is the most natural thing to say, and these are not yet teenagers.  Should we expect this language suddenly to stop when they get older?  I don’t think so.

Whatever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me?” 

Reared Irish Roman Catholic, I recall being called a “cod cruncher” and “papist” – didn’t know what that meant – a Mick or Paddy for being Irish, a carrot top for my reddish blond hair, a Hibe – I didn’t know it was the short for Hibernian or characteristic of the Irish and not as a compliment -- Cat-licker for being Catholic, and Mackerel Snapper for being forbidden to eat meat on Fridays under the pain of sin.

My da, who was a bit of a pugilist, told me to ignore all these references, “Don’t do anything until they touch you, Jimmy, and then hit them in the fricken mouth!”  Easy for him to say.

*     *     *

My sense is that life has become absurd to the point of the ridiculous.  Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, spell it as “opportunity."  They conjugate our angst into products and programs to exploit this to their advantage and our delight.  Take television's "situation comedies," for example. 

We are so afraid of offending anyone that when we make a Freudian slip, we apologize profusely. Freud suggested that such slips were our unconscious coming to the surface, or an expression of the way we actually feel, and of course, we don't want anyone to know how we really feel about them or anything else, leastwise to ourselves.

The creative geniuses of social network developers have latched on to this absurdity to ridiculous success, making many of them billionaires and not long out of their nappies.   

More than a billion souls across the globe post their personal absurd anxieties and ridiculous inanities on these social networks with photographs and text to an equally anxious and inane audience. 

Cable television 24/7 news hits its audience with "breaking news" every five minutes, of course, between commercials.  You would think the world could not survive without this information, yet if you take stock, as I have done, the programs day-to-day are so similar repeating the same anxiousness, the same hypersensitivity, and in the same anxious and monotonous staccato.

We get comic relief with Bill O'Reilly on cable TV, and on cable radio the same with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.  The content of their shows deal with the same cesspool of material of network and cable news, despite O'Reilly insistence that with him "the spin stops here," but as entertainment.  We love to be entertained.

Whatever happened to “there go I but for the grace of God” when we would display charity when someone fell from grace?  Or the biblical idea that “he who be without sin cast the first stone”?

Apparently, charity and forgiveness have been expunged from our conscience.  We are inundated with the message 24/7 that "the sky is falling" so when it is falling, we are too bored to pay attention, too insensitive to notice much less care to our regret.

*     *     *

Most recently National Public Radio Television presented a several hour hagiography of the “Roosevelt’s”: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Film biographer Ken Burns was the creator of this entertaining assembly.

I'm sure it enjoyed a huge audience given we are bereft of leadership today.  But my wonder is if the Roosevelt's type of leadership is what is needed.

Having read books on these people, their sins seem strangely more provocative on film, further evidence of how powerful this media.

Scholars, biographers, journalists and pundits parade across the TV screen on what these people were like.  We hunger for evidence of their human frailties making our sins feel venial in comparison.

For example, Teddy Roosevelt comes across as a manic achiever with a perverse need to destroy in order to create.  His legacy of hegemony or empire is brought out to give the impression that the sleepy United States in late nineteenth and early twentieth century would still be inclined to isolationism were it not for the bravado of diminutive Teddy. 

The Theodore Roosevelt era, rich in achievement, also demonstrated the mindset of the overachiever and the implicit dangers that might engender. 

To wit, he graduated from Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa, Magnum Cum Laude, with a class ranking in the top third of his class, but was especially proud to point out that none of those who graduated ahead of him "were gentlemen.”  Not only was he born into elitism, but elitism was the fire in his belly.

Franklin Roosevelt, on the other hand was a mommy’s boy to the end with the embedded solipsism that goes with such nurturing.

Just the opposite of his cousin, Franklin was tall, handsome, and a charmer but hardly a serious student.  Elected four times to the presidency, but living only three months into his fourth term, he left a mess for Harry S. Truman, his vice president, to handle that still haunts us to this day.

At the Yalta Conference, near the end of WWII, FDR, Great Britain’s Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin divided the world, especially the Middle East, into the quagmire that it has become three quarters of a century later.

Patrician Roosevelt and Churchill acted as if the world revolved around their axis, failing to correctly gauge or understand their pedestrian adversary, Stalin.  He had them for lunch at Yalta, got everything he wanted and gave up little in the bargain.  For that blunder, the world has been paying a heavy price ever since.

Now we come to Eleanor Roosevelt.  Much as Ken Burns had wonderful things to say about her, not dodging her husband's great betrayal, she was clearly the brightest star in this firmament, more able, centered, mature, intelligent, and effective than this lot of men, including Stalin.

Eleanor was also patrician by birth, but never wore her elitism on her sleeve for her instinct was to treat all people with dignity.  My wonder is where FDR's "New Deal” would have been without her influence.  She was not absurd or ridiculous but close to divine.

*     *     *

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) era is mine as well.  My da worked on Roosevelt’s WPA.  I now benefit from FDR’s Social Security System and graduated from land grant public universities, or otherwise would have been unable to attain a university education, so I am grateful for that.  

Education has led to the career I have had.  But it was what FDR didn’t do that counts.  He didn’t get in my way, but let me find my own way on my own terms.

Now, it seems people are looking for safe guards in an uncertain world.  They are consumed with security and willing to sacrifice many freedoms for it, when the socio-economic climate and geopolitical status of the world is constantly in flux. 

Fear has the face of people who look different, speak and dress different than we do.  This is a bias that is deep in the American psyche.  African Americans have been here for hundreds of years, and yet it was reported today (September 28, 2014) in The Tampa Bay Times  that “Black people in the Tampa Bay Area are at least six times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as white people.”  Clearly, fear lurches in the shadows of our collective minds.   

People tend to compound the situation by turning away from reality, ceasing to work for a living, but living to work for things, using acquisitiveness as therapy to quell their anxieties, craving a more exciting life often retreating into self-negating habits, needing a bigger home, nicer car, more influential friends, and the required accoutrements to push boredom to the back of their minds.    

My wonder is when appearing to be interesting or being obsessed with the lives of interesting people became more important than being interested in something of and for itself.  

It didn’t originate with Facebook and other facsimiles of socio-electronic networking.  Don’t blame these creators for simply exploiting our preoccupations to their advantage.  My wonder is when thinking became akin to punishment? 

 

*     *     *

A “ho hum” column by New York Times columnist David Brooks caught my attention: “Things aren’t that bad, but many leaders are.”  Now that is a loaded declarative comment.  It stunned me, and when I read the article I was incredulous that Brooks had written it.

I know this journalist with a fine conscience has to write these columns to get paid.  I sense that like the rest of us he has his bad days, when he doesn’t have anything important to say, but yet must knock out a column. 

True, I don’t have to read his column.  And if I read it, I don’t have to get exercised about it, but unfortunately, I was and am because I can’t believe, given the tectonic shift in the nature of leadership that he believes what he has written.

In the column, he’s saying our cities are doing great: “Widening the lens,” he says, “we’re living in an era with the greatest reduction in global poverty ever -- across Asia and Africa.”  

Well, now, he knows that is not quite true.  Even South Africa, which once found Bantus living better than most Africans, share the problem of poverty with the rest of the world today.  With the exception of pockets of wealth, more than 50 percent across the globe are still living in poverty.

We in the West like to blame it on the lack of initiative, but I have seen it first hand, and initiative has little to do with such status.

If this is an endorsement of capitalism, it leaves out pollution and political instability fostered by aggressive industrialization at the expense of the rural life known to nearly three billion souls (China, India, and Africa), not to mention the civil wars and jihad terrorism plots that feed on disparity, inequality, chaos and ignorance.

Given David Brooks’ upbeat picture, what he claims the world suffers from is not enough elite leaders, leaders I suspect like Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Elitism, he claims, is the key to the world’s troubles.  This must be music to the ears of graduates pouring out of our elite universities.

I’m not sure we’re ready for a manic Teddy or a solipsistic mommy’s boy Franklin. 

To make his point he reminds us of the elitism of our Founding Fathers, and where would we be without them, right? 

Absurd and ridiculous as this premise is, he suggests the antithesis of elitism is characterized in Senator Ted Crux and Karl Marx who champion the individual in the masses for having the capability of leading and ruling and bringing about social justice and change.  

I confess I am acquainted with Marx and his writing, but not Crux and his.  Much of what Marx said makes sense to me.  Lenin and Stalin didn’t establish the communism that Marx pontificated, but another form of elitism.  

Isn't it ironic that communist China is becoming increasingly capitalistic while democratic Europe and the United States are becoming increasingly socialistic?

It is counterintuitive to claim people can lead without managers and leaders because that is what we know.  

If American is an idea that is constantly maturating, and I think it is, it suggests an increasingly well educated population may find a better way than the elite have saddled us with. 

From my point of view, we are at the brink of a watershed moment.  The world is literally turning upside down on how it should be run, and who should be running it.

Stated another way, the current concept of leadership is as stale as day old bread albeit still in place, but crumbling.

Those with answers programmed to wait and react to elite authority, and then obediently clean up the mess that leadership leaves behind is unraveling.

Clean up has been the role of workers since the beginning of time.  It is changing because a select one percent of the populations no longer has the answers, or even understands the problems.  They have been living too long like the “Flying Dutchman” floating about the globe isolated from reality, failing with impunity, and now that day is drawing to a close.

*     *     *

CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT -- continued from "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul!

CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT – continued from “Search for the Real Parents of My Soul!”

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

© September 25, 2014

THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel army led by Mattathias the Hasmonean, and his five sons.  After King Antiochus issued his decree forbidding Jewish religious practices, this father and his sons, coming from the small rural village of Modi’in, stood up to oppose Antiochus and his proclamation.

This sparked the Maccabean Revolt, a conflict that lasted from B.C. 167 to 160, between these Judean rebels and the army of the Seleucid Empire.

In the second century B.C., Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and the Seleucid Empire based in Syria, kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great (B.C. 356-323).

Judea had been under Ptolemaic rule, but fell to the Seleucids in B.C. 200.  At the time, the Hellenistic influence on Jews was pervasive.  Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class, notably the Tobiad family, wished to dispense with Jewish law altogether and to adopt the Greek lifestyle, mainly for economic and political reasons.  Hellenistic Jews even built a gymnasium in Jerusalem to compete in international Greek games, while desiring to remove their marks of circumcision and to repudiate the Holy Covenant (First Maccabees).

This incensed Mattathias the Hasmonean, who rallied Jews for the Maccabean Revolt with the declaration:

“If anyone be zealous for the laws of his country and for the worship of God, let him follow me” (Josephus, 1911).

Thousands flocked to his banner.  Mattathias killed a Hellenistic Jew who stepped forward to offer a sacrifice to an idol in Mattathias' place.  The full revolt was now underway.  He and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judah to escape prosecution.  He subsequently died in battle.  After his death in B.C. 166, his third son, Judah Maccabee, became general of the Jewish army, which was thereafter known as the “Maccabees,” a term taken from the Hebrew word for "hammer."

After a long series of battles, with the Maccabean forces greatly outnumbered, Judah led his Jewish dissidents to victory over the Seleucid dynasty in guerrilla warfare, which was directed against Hellenized Jews, of whom there were many.

The Maccabees destroyed pagan altars in the villages, circumcised boys and forced reluctant Jews to convert to the cause (Nicholas de Large, 1997).

The Maccabees gained notoriety among the Seleucid army for their guerrilla tactics, which were unconventional for the time.  After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph in B.C. 165, and ritually cleansed the Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship, restoring the true ritual of God.

Judah was killed later in battle but not before his rebel army had taken control of Judea, which had been ruled as a province of the Seleucid Empire.  The Maccabees founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from B.C. 164 to B.C. 63, reasserting the Jewish religion, partly by force conversions, expanding the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reducing the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism.

The only survivor of Mattathias’ five sons was Jonathan Maccabee.  He proclaimed Judea an independent nation appointing himself as High Priest. The nation was now free of foreign domination.  But the years of religious anarchy and Hellenistic influence had taken their toll.   Dr. Lauterbach writes:

During the seventy or eighty years of religious anarchy, many new practices had been gradually adopted by the people (Lauterbach, 1951).

The British scholar Travers Hereford adds:

In the absence of authoritarian guidance, the people had gone their own way; new customs had found a place among old religious usages … new ideas had been formed under the influence of Hellenism, which had permeated the land for more than a century, and here had been no one to point out the danger which thereby threatened the religious life of the people (Hereford, 1933).

A large Seleucid army was sent to quash the revolt, and reestablish dominance, but it returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV.  Meanwhile, its commander Lysias, preoccupied with internal Seleucid affairs, agreed to a political compromise that restored religious freedom.

The Jewish festival of Hanukkah celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple following Judah Maccabee's victory over the Seleucids.  According to Rabbinic tradition, the victorious Maccabees could only find a small jug of oil that had remained uncontaminated by virtue of a seal, and although it only contained enough oil to sustain the Menorah for one day, it miraculously lasted for eight days, by which time further oil could be procured (The Talmud).

Professor John Ma of Oxford University argues that it is possible to read the main sources of the events covered here as not being the loss of religious and civil rights by the Jews in B.C. 168, or the result of religious persecution, but rather as an administrative punishment by the Seleucid Empire in the aftermath of local unrest.  And that the Temple was restored upon petition by the High Priest Menelaus, rather than liberated and rededicated by the Maccabees (John Ma, 2013).

THE SANHEDRIN

We are now at the point where the Pharisees first make their appearance in history, sometime after the Maccabean War.  Before we note this, we need to examine briefly the rise of the Sanhedrin, the body which Pharisees (separatists) dominated during much of its existence, emerging largely out of the group of scribes and sages.

The word “Pharisee” comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic parush or parushi, which means “one who is separated.”  It may also mean their separation from Gentiles, sources of ritual impurity or from irreligious Jews.  More on this later..

The term, Sanhedrin is the name of the Beth Din HaGadol (The Great Court) during the Second Temple Period.  The first part of the word “sin” refers to the Torah that was received on Mount Sinai combined with the second part of the word “hedrin,” meaning “glorification” to express the Great Court’s role.

This ancient Jewish court system, or the Great Sanhedrin, was the supreme religious body in the land of Israel during the time of the Holy Temple.  Smaller religious Sanhedrins were in towns, as well as civil political democratic Sanhedrins, and existed until the abolishment of the rabbinic patriarchate in about A.D. 425.  

The earliest record of a Sanhedrin is by Josephus who wrote of a political Sanhedrin convened by the Romans in B.C. 57.  Hellenistic sources generally depict the Sanhedrin as a political and judicial council headed by the country’s ruler.

The origin of the religious Sanhedrin can be found in the Council of the seventy elders founded by Moses:

Gather to Me 70 men of the elders of Israel, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting, so that they should stand there with you (Numbers 11:16)

This was the first Sanhedrin, counting Moses himself, it consisted of 71 members.  As members within the Sanhedrin passed away, or became unfit for service, new members underwent ordination.  These ordinations continued in an unbroken line from Moses to the prophets, including Ezra and Nehemiah, to the Knesses HaGedolah or Great Assembly.

It wasn’t until several hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple that this line was broken, and the Sanhedrin dissolved.

The Great Sanhedrin dealt with religious and ritualistic Temple matters, criminal matters pertaining to the secular court, proceedings in connection with the discovery of a corpse, trials of adulterous wives, tithes, preparation of Torah Scrolls for the king and the Temple, drawing up the calendar of events, and the solving of difficulties relating to ritual law.

The Great Sanhedrin lost its authority in about A.D. 30 to inflict capital punishment.  After the Temple was destroyed, so was the Great Sanhedrin.

While some sources would lead us to believe that the Sanhedrin was the direct successor to the Synagogue, this was not the case.  It was not until B.C. 196, or after the hiatus of some eighty years that the Sanhedrin was first established.

This was discovered in the ancient manuscript called “Fragments of a Zadokite Work,” or “Damascus Document,” as it is also known, having some of the most interesting texts.  It is the only Qumran sectarian work known before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Zadokite Work is a composite text edited together from different sections of a larger source.  Scholars have attempted to place the different sections in a chronological order to generate a more complete work of the original using evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of fragments from the scroll were found in the Cairo Geniza before the Qumran discoveries. The Cairo Geniza was located in a room adjoining The Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, which was gradually stuffed full of papers until it was discovered in 1897 by European scholar Solomon Schechter, who found over 190,000 manuscripts and fragments that were written in mainly Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic.  Originally called the “Zadokite Fragments,” after the catch of documents found at Qumran, the name was changed to “Damascus” for its many references to that city.

The “Damascus Document” makes no literal reference to Damascus in Syria, but to what is understood geographically as Babylon or Qumran itself, probably taking up the Biblical language found in Amos 5:27, "therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus.”

Damascus was part of Israel under King David, and the Damascus Document expresses an eschatological hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy.

In any event, the “Damascus Document” or “Zadokite Work” points to B.C. 196 as the year the Sanhedrin first met (Lauterbach, 1951).  This body is said to consist of “men of understanding Aaron,” or priests, and “from Israel wise teachers,” that is also lay teachers who were not priests.

Priests and lay teachers in the new Sanhedrin was a new innovation.  Until that time, the priests with their assistants, the Levites, were considered to have the only authority to teach religion to the Jewish people.  This would not have been permitted while the Synagogue was in authority.  This is clearly shown from the writings of Malachi, who was contemporary with the early days of the Synagogue:

For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he (the priest) is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts (Malachi 2:7).

The Law of Moses, which God had directly commanded him, clearly enjoined that the priests and Levites were to perform the functions of teachers, not lay teachers who would presume to do so (Deuteronomy 18:1-7; 33:10, Ezekiel 44:23).

Incidentally, the Sanhedrin is mentioned in the Gospels relating to the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus and several times in the Acts of the Apostles, including a Great Sanhedrin in chapter five, where Gamaliel appeared, and in the stoning of Stephen the deacon in chapter seven.

The Hasmonean court in the Land of Israel was presided over by Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea until B.C. 76.  After his death, it was presided over by his wife, and called the Sanhedrin.

The exact nature of this early Sanhedrin is not known.  It is believed it was a body of sages and priests, or political legislative and judicial institutions.  Only after the destruction of the Second Temple was the Sanhedrin made up of only sages.

THE LAY TEACHERS REJECT THE PREMISE OF THE SANHEDRIN

Why this radical departure?  Again, we must go back briefly to the period of religious anarchy when the Egyptian Ptolemies ruled Judea.  Both the Ptolemies and the later Seleucid rulers looked upon the High Priest of Israel as the head of the Jewish nation.  In turn, it was the High Priest with the assistance of other priests who dealt with the Hellenistic rulers and acted in behalf of Hellenistic authority with the Jewish people.

Outstanding among these High Priests was Joseph, the son of Tobias, and his son Hyrcanus.  In order to be successful diplomats at the Hellenistic court in Alexandria, they felt it necessary to adopt the Greek ways and the Greek manner.  This culture or mindset was brought back with them to Judea.  Thus, it was the priests, the ones who should have been teaching the Law of Moses and the Law of God  to the Jewish people, who by default or design, as their temperaments varied, became the chief proponents of Hellenism.

From B.C. 206 to B.C. 196, or during this ten-year period, a series of battles between the rival Hellenistic kings of Syria and Egypt came to devastate several parts of Judea.  Many Jews blamed Hellenism for this collateral damage to their sacred places and sought to return to the old ways and laws of their fathers.  But to whom could they turn?

They felt betrayed by the High Priests and the Levites for these priests, as a whole, had become thoroughly Hellenized.  Incredibly, different priests were taking sides in the Hellenistic wars, and raising armies to help either the Syrians or the Egyptians, while the Jewish tradition was all but abandoned, except for a few lay teachers and some minor priests.  They appeared to be the only ones who had studied God’s Word, and remained loyal and committed to God’s Law.  They sat in a new Sanhedrin refusing to accept the authority of the High Priest, or to teach at his behest.

*     *     *

NEXT: WHAT WAS GOD’S WAY ANYWAY?  ENTER THE PHARISEES!

CHRISTIANITY -- BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT -- "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul!"

CHRISTIANITY -- BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT

“Search for the Real Parents of My Soul!”

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

© September 23, 2014

Just who were the Pharisees, and where did their religious doctrines originate?  In the Old Testament?  If so, why did Jesus so strenuously oppose their ideas?  Is the Bible – both Old and New Testament – a house divided? 

An examination of the period between the Testaments shows that while men may be divided, the Bible is one continuous story.  Now, as mentioned earlier, this is not a theological study.  Nor is this an attempt to prove or disprove the divinity of Jesus or the essence of Christianity.  That said it is important to note that Christianity didn’t just suddenly happen.

Unfortunately, many professing to be Christians suffer from the mistaken notion that Jesus came to do away with His Father’s religion, that is, the religion of the Old Testament.  His own words belie this:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets.  I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill (Mathew 5:17).

It would appear that part of the problem has to do with the interpretation of the Pharisees, and other religionists of the period as representatives of the revelation given to Moses – God’s Old Testament religion.

The Bible shows that the One who later became Jesus, the Christ, was the Lord of the Old Testament:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made (John 1:1, 3; Ephesians 3:9; Hebrews 1:2).

Given this as source reference, then The Babylonian captivity or exile refers to the time period in Israel’s history when Jews were taken captive by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. 

It is an important period of biblical history as the captivity/exile and the return and restoration of the Jewish nation were fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

God used Babylon as His agent of judgment against Israel for their sins of idolatry and rebellion against Him. There were several different times during this period (607-586 B.C.) when the Jews were taken captive by Babylon. With each successive rebellion against Babylonian rule, Nebuchadnezzar would lead his armies against Judah until they laid siege to Jerusalem for over a year, killing many and destroying the Jewish temple, taking captive many thousands of Jews, leaving Jerusalem in ruin.

As prophesied in Scripture, the Jewish people would be allowed to return to Jerusalem after 70 years of exile. That prophecy was fulfilled in B.C. 537, and the Jews were allowed by King Cyrus of Persia to return to Israel and begin rebuilding the city and Temple. The return under the direction of Ezra led to a revival among the Jewish people and the completion of the Temple.

Under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II, the Babylonian Empire spread throughout the Middle East, and around 607 B.C., King Jehoiakim of Judah was forced into submission, becoming a vassal to Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:1).

It was during this time that Nebuchadnezzar took captive many of the finest and brightest young men from each city in Judah, including Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

After three years of serving Nebuchadnezzar, Jehoiakim of Judah rebelled against Babylonian rule and once again turned to Egypt for support. After sending his army to deal with Judah’s revolt, Nebuchadnezzar himself left Babylon in B.C. 598 to deal with the problem.

Arriving in Jerusalem around March of B.C. 597, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, taking control of the area, looting it, and taking captive Jehoikim’s son, Jehoiachin, his family, and almost all of the population of Judah, leaving only the poorest on the land (2 Kings 24:8-16).

At that time, Nebuchadnezzar appointed King Zedekiah to rule as his representative over Judah, but after nine years and still not having learned their lesson, Zedekiah led Judah in rebellion against Babylon one final time (2 Kings 24–25).

Influenced by false prophets and ignoring Jeremiah’s warnings, Zedekiah decided to join a coalition that was being formed by Edom, Moab, Ammon and Phoenicia in rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 27:1-3). This resulted in Nebuchadnezzar again laying siege to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem fell in July B.C. 586, and Zedekiah was taken captive to Babylon after seeing his sons killed before him and then having his eyes plucked out (2 Kings 25). At this time, Jerusalem was laid to waste, the temple destroyed and all the houses burned. The majority of the Jewish people were taken captive, but, again, Nebuchadnezzar left a remnant of poor people to serve as farmers and vine dressers (2 Kings 25:12).

The books of 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings deal with much of the time leading up to the fall of both the Northern Kingdom and Judah. They also cover the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the beginning of the Babylonian captivity.

Jeremiah was one of the prophets leading up to the fall of Jerusalem and the exile.  Ezekiel and Daniel were written while the Jews were in exile. Ezra deals with the return of the Jews as promised over 70 years before by God through the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah. The book of Nehemiah also covers the return and rebuilding of Jerusalem after the exile was over.

The Babylonian captivity had one very significant impact on the nation of Israel when it returned to the land.  It would never again be corrupted by the idolatry and false gods of the surrounding nations. A revival among Jews took place after the return of the Jews to Israel and the rebuilding of the temple. We see those accounts in Ezra and Nehemiah as the nation would once again return to the God who had delivered them from their enemies.

Just as God had promised through the prophet Jeremiah, God judged the Babylonians for their sins, and the Babylonian Empire fell to the armies of Persia in B.C. 539, once again proving God’s promises to be true.

The seventy-year period of the Babylonian captivity is an important part of Israel’s history for which Christians should be familia. Like many other Old Testament events, this historical account demonstrates God’s faithfulness to His people, His judgment of sin, and the surety of His promises.

The last three authors of the Old Testament Ezra, Nehemiah and Malachi lived and worked in the Jewish community that had returned to Judea after the Babylonian captivity (Durant, 1944).  They were largely successful in bringing people to an awareness of God. 

Through their influence, a body of priests was set up to guide the people in matters of religion.  This came to be known as the “Great Assembly,” or “Synagogue,” but also as the “Knesset Hagedolah” (Latourette, 1953).  

The Knesset was instrumental in guiding the Jewish people to living in accordance with God’s Law during the Persian dominance (Graetz, 1894).  Because of this act of faith and perseverance, God granted His people special protection and the privilege of a series of miracles at the coming of Alexander the Great from Macedonia in B.C. 330.

A NEW WAY OF LIFE -- HELLENISM 

At his death, Alexander’s empire was divided into four parts (Daniel: 8:22).  Judea was first passed under the rule of the Ptolemy’s of Egypt, and later to the Seleucidae of Egypt.  Both of these were Macedonian (i.e., Greek dynasties) and were exponents of the pagan, or Gentile way of life known as “Hellenism” (Hamilton, 1963)

                                                                       

The division of Alexander’s Empire, B.C. 303, following his death in B.C. 323, found his successors competing for his throne.  After numerous battles and shifts of allegiances, the empire was divided up among five of Alexander’s generals:

Kingdom of Lysimachus

Kingdom of Cassander

Kingdom of Antigonus

Kingdom of Ptolemy

Kingdom of Seleucus

The rivalry for power continued, however, and after the defeat of Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus in B.C. 301, there were four kingdoms. The wars lasted until B.C. 281, and resulted in the establishment of three main kingdoms: Egypt, Asia Minor, and Macedonia. 

Although the unity of the empire was gone, Greek civilization continued to spread throughout this region.      

The basic philosophy behind Hellenism was: everyman had the right to think for himself on any matter as long as there was not a real departure from the customs that were Greek.

             

This philosophy, freedom of thought or individualism, resulted in a myriad of confusion and ambiguity, contradictory beliefs and opinions as to how a Greek should behave in everyday life.  

Everyman was allowed his own ideas about science and art, law and religion.  So varied were these opinions, even among Greek scholars, that individuals took pride in contending with them and with each other.  Not only did Greeks challenge those supposedly most wise and knowing, but the very definitions of “wisdom” and “knowledge.”

With the encouragement of Greek rulers, Hellenism spread rapidly into the Ptolemaic Empire, and Judea was by no means bypassed. 

THE SYNAGOGUE NO LONGER IN AUTHORITY

Within only a score of years after the coming of the Greeks, the Synagogue, or Great Assembly disappeared from history as an organized body having religious control over the Jewish people.  It is not known exactly how the Greeks dismissed this authoritative religious body from its official capacity and function as teachers of the Law, but it is known that it ceased to exist.

Without the religious guidance of the Synagogue, many Jews began to follow Greek customs and ideas as the Hellenistic culture swept across Judea.

With the change from Persian to Greek rule (remember, the Ptolemics were Greeks), Hellenism made its influence felt, and came pouring like a flood into a country which had known nothing of it.  There was no escape from its influence.  It was present everywhere, in the street and the marketplace, in the everyday life and all the phases of social intercourse (Herford, 1933).

Much of this Hellenistic influence came from the numerous Greek cities which were established under the Ptolemy’s.  Most of these were on the Mediterranean seacoast, or on the east side of Jordan.

With the Synagogue removed from the scene and this new culture substituted for the Law of God, the Jews began to become Hellenistic with little evidence of protest.  It was as if the Jews had lost their guidance system and way to understanding the Law.  Except for a few isolated teachers here and there, Jews now lacked a moral compass and the familiar authority of the Synagogue.

After a few years of this influence, the Jewish people came literally to a state of utter religious confusion.  Some endeavored to keep a form of the Scriptural teachings, but Hellenism was everywhere, and became so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to adhere to the Laws of Moses.

Nearly everything that was Greek was antagonistic to the Laws of God, and, without the religious guidance of the Synagogue, many Jews became tolerant of Hellenistic innovations, and as time progressed, to adopt many Greek ideas and customs as their own.

ONE-HUNDRED-YEARS OF PTOLEMAIC RULE SETS IN

After a series of battles with the Syrians, Ptolemy I, the Greek king of Egypt, took firm control of Judea in B.C. 301.  His descendants retained that control for the next one-hundred-years, or until B.C. 198.

This one-hundred-year period of Greek-Egyptian dominance is important in the religious history of the Jews.  This is the same period in which many significant changes began to take place in Jewish religious life.  Indeed, it would be impossible to understand Christianity without attending to Jewish roots in this Hellenistic period:

During the comparatively quiet rule of the Ptolemy’s, Greek ideas, customs and morality had been making peaceful conquests in Palestine (Kent, 1940).  There was little resistance to these inroads.  We are informed by Dr. Jacob Lauterbach, a Jewish scholar, that Jewish tradition knows of no religious teacher who taught any form of religion from the death of Simon the Just (B.C. 270) until the year B.C. 190 (Lauterbach, 1951).

“This would have been impossible,” writes Lauterbach, “if there had been any official activity of the teachers in these years.” 

But there were none.  Whole generations of Jews, came and went, offering no great resistance to the new customs which were encouraged by the commercial and educational exchange taking place between Jews, Greeks and Hellenistic Egyptians.  In fact, thousands of Jews migrated to Egypt during this period.  By the end of the Ptolemaic rule, there were over one million Jews in Egypt, out of a total population of about seven million (Lauterbach, 1951).

A prime example of Hellenistic influence is the pagan concept of the immortality of the soul.  This doctrine was widely publicized in the writings of the pagan Greek philosopher Plato (Plato, 1956).  For our purposes here, however, it is mentioned only to represent the organizational bridge between the Old and New Testament.  To wit:

The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is speculation nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture.  The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended (Jewish Encyclopedia).

THE COMING OF THE SELEUCIDS

In B.C. 198, the Seleucid kingdom of Syria conquered Judea and drove out the Egyptians.  Like the Ptolemy’s, the Seleucids were also of Greek origin, and equally Hellenistic in culture and perspective. 

At first, conditions in Judea remained much the same as they had been during the reign of the Ptolemy’s.  The Seleucid ruler, Antiochus III, was favorably disposed toward the Jews.  Conditions rapidly changed, however, with the coming to the throne of Antiochus Epiphanes in B.C. 175.

Shortly after he ascended to the throne, there was contention among several of the priests of Jerusalem for the exalted office of High Priest.  Jason, the brother of the reigning High Priest, persuaded Antiochus to transfer the office to him by offering a large sum of money to the King.

Jason was of a Hellenistic persuasion and was followed in this manner by many in the Jewish community.  A passion for Greek costumes, Greek customs, and Greek names (Jason’s Hebrew name was Joshum) seized the people.   Large numbers of Jews were enrolled as citizens of Antioch, the capital of Syria.  Many even endeavored to conceal the fact that they had been circumcised. 

To demonstrate that he had left all the traditions of his race and people behind, Jason sent a rich present for sacrifices in connection with the great festival at Tyre in honor of the god Hercules (Kent, 1940).

Three years after Jason assumed office, Menelaus (Hebrew name, Onias) offered Antiochus a larger bribe than Jason’s, and was named as High Priest.  Because of this, Jason fled beyond Jordan to the Ammonites for refuge (McClintock and Strong, 1939). 

Many of the Jews thought Jason had been unjustly removed from office.  People began to take sides, some for Jason, others for Menelaus.  Fighting broke out between the two groups.  Both factions were decidedly Hellenistic with the symbolic Jewish authority of the High Priest seemingly lost in the struggle.

Jason’s forces won out and Menelaus fled to Antioch.  King Antiochus was furious when he learned his authority had been usurped with the reappointment of Jason as High Priest, which was taken as an act against his government.

At that time, Antiochus was planning to conquer Egypt.  When that failed, due to the intervention of the Romans, he decided to take his anger out on the rebellious Jews of Jerusalem who defied his authority by displacing his High Priest, Menelaus, with Jason.

Antiochus, while feigning peace, proceeded to take the city of Jerusalem.  He then polluted the Temple by burning swine’s flesh on its altar, and erected a statue of Jupiter of Olympus in the Holy Place.  This had been prophesized by Daniel (Daniel 11:29-31).  The king's men then plundered the Temple of all objects of value and issued a proclamation forbidding Jews to worship God or in any way to practice their religion.

To put this in perspective, despite the severity of this decree, there were many Hellenistic Jews who nonetheless accepted its draconian cruelty without protest.  Many so inclined were priests and Levites, the more privileged in the Jewish community.  The majority of Jews, however, were poor, and had never shown much interest in things religious, but now were forbidden to behave as Jews, denied the ritualistic practice of Jewish diet, the custom of circumcision, and other aspects of Jewish culture that gave them identity as Jews.  Adding insult to injury, they were required to worship Hellenistic idols.  That was simply too much.

*     *     *

P.S. NEXT THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

SELF-UNIVERSITY, THE NATURAL WORLD OF THE AUTODIDACT!

SELF-UNIVERSITY, THE NATURAL WORLD OF THE AUTODIDACT

PROFILES OF AUTODIDACTS 

“CHICAGO” WAYNE SANDER, ENGINEER

DR. DONALD FARR, ENGINEER/PSYCHOLOGIST

CHARLES D. HAYES, AUTHOR/PHILOSOPHER

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

© September 21, 2014

SELF-UNIVERSITY, THE MODERN PROMISE OF PLATO

A number of coincidental things have recently tumbled into place and penetrated my consciousness, thanks to e-mail and the Internet.  They concern something common to us all, and revolve around the concept of the autodidact.  

A FORMER HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE WRITES:

Jim,

I am sure this article would not otherwise rise to the level of attracting your attention (or many others outside this area).  But since we share a small bit of the same geographical history I thought you might enjoy a brief respite from your all-encompassing intellectual pursuits.

See http://www.ces.sdsu.edu/blog/2014/08/osher-student-closing-in-on-200th-course/

Regards

Wayne (:>))

THE ARTICLE: 

“Osher Student Closing in on 200th Course!" 

Suzana Norbert

August 27, 2014 

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute - Student Profile

 This is a profile of Wayne Sander with Osher's Marivi Soliven and Susan McBeth.

“Chicago” Wayne Sander’s upbringing in a Midwestern Mississippi River town to a blue-collar family that valued hard work and skilled labor over higher education gave no indication that one day he would excel at not only higher education, but education for pure intellectual recreation.

“The narrative I grew up believing was that college and university was for spoiled rich kids who were too lazy – and probably incompetent – to earn an ‘honest living,’” said Sander.

As such, he put in only enough effort to maintain a C average in high school. “Seven years later, with a wife and two small children, working a seven-day rotating shift in a chemical factory, the truth regarding the value of education finally revealed itself.

Without the benefit of further education, I was destined to a lifetime of relatively mindless work, employing a biorhythm-destroying schedule that was only sustainable with copious quantities of black coffee and Alka-Seltzer.”

So with only one high-school science class and minimal math under his belt, Sander concluded that the way out was a degree in engineering. “As ridiculous as that aspiration now seems, we sold our little house, my treasured T-Bird and took our modest savings to embark on what most considered a ‘fool’s errand,’” he said.

Four and one-half years later, he proudly accepted his degree in mechanical engineering from San Diego State University, having worked full-time for all but one semester. He continued on to finish a graduate degree at night, while working as an engineer by day. Along the way, he decided that in his retirement, he’d like to return to campus, possibly as a part-time faculty member. He did in fact return – decades later – but again as a student, completing a second graduate degree at age 70.

“Directly following completion of that degree, I actually fulfilled my earlier aspiration by accepting a position as an affiliate professor in SDSU’s College of Engineering as part of a program called Project Lead the Way,” said Sander. “It’s where high-school science teachers are taught to teach introductory engineering classes as part of their curriculum. It’s also designed to attract female and minority students to the engineering field. A great program.

It was during this on-campus exposure that I discovered the Osher program. It’s a virtual smorgasbord of educational offerings … a myriad of previously unexplored and surprisingly fascinating subjects. It’s also addictive.”

Addictive indeed. The Osher Institute at SDSU offers intellectual adventure for students age 50 and better, and Sander took his first course in the spring of 2006. He has since breezed through 195 more, on topics ranging from philosophy, history, and human aggression; to democracy, morality and musical theater.

“My first semester was incredible in the offerings and the level of instruction,” said Sander. “The three most memorable that semester were The Dawn & Twilight of Science, a four-session class by Bruno Leone, a spellbinding lecturer and concert pianist. Here is truly a world-class lecturer, the likes of which were absent in my previous exposure to higher education.

“Also offered that semester was a course entitled U.S. Supreme Court: Who Elected Them Anyway? by Gary LaFleur, a knowledgeable and gentle lecturer who destroyed my mostly negative stereotypical vision of attorneys.

“And an unforgettable course entitled Impolite Subjects; Sex, Religion & Politics by Rolf Schulze.

It’s the only class I ‘had’ to repeat. A memory is indelibly etched in my mind. It was toward the last of the six-session course. One class member, a frail, stern-looking lady with her grey hair tied back in a bun, resembled a second-grade teacher I had – one that my grandfather had told me ‘She was an old lady when I was in the second grade.’

This widowed lady raised her hand and softly said, ‘You know, a one-night stand now and then is nice, but I really miss the continuing companionship of a committed partner.’ A really poignant sharing with our class by a woman whose name I can’t recall. One who earned my everlasting respect for both her bravery and for this program that allowed and encouraged her to crack open the window to our rarely shared humanity.”

Bravery. Humanity. Friendship. Camaraderie. Potlucks. Edventures. Even a reunion of long-lost college roommates. It’s all waiting to be found at the Osher Institute.

By the way, “Chicago” Wayne is not from Chicago. He chose the nickname as a result of his attempt to teach his wife’s infant grandson new words. The little boy found the word hilarious. “Each time he heard it, he nearly fell off his chair. But he also thought it was my name,” said Sander. “So in that family I became ‘Chicago.’ But because it’s distinctive and has three explosive syllables, I found it useful for dinner reservations where they call your name. In addition, hostesses and others – regardless of interaction frequency – never forgot your name.”

With or without the Chicago portion of his name, Wayne Sander has already become a legend at SDSU’s Osher Institute.

*     *     *     

PROFILE OF DR. DONALD FARR

Dr. Don, as I call him, like Wayne Sander, grew up in my sleepy little Mississippi Valley town of Clinton, Iowa.  

He went to high school at the North End of Clinton, or Lyons, and graduated from Lyons High School, while Wayne Sander and I graduate from Clinton High.  

All three of us graduate the same year, all three from working class families, and all three have had international careers.

Like Wayne Sander, Don expected to labor in some factory.  Once out of high school, he joined the Curtis Lumber Company, a Clinton industrial plant making finished products out of wood, and shipped all over the world.   

The Curtis Lumber Company was like a vestigial organ from another time.  

In the early twentieth century, Clinton was the lumber capital of the world turning sawdust into gold as logs were floated down the Mississippi River to Clinton from Minnesota and Wisconsin, and sawed into lumber and finished products.

When the lumber forests were depleted, the mills in Clinton shut down, and scores of millionaires left town, but not Curtis Lumber Company.  It is still making sashes and doors, cabinets and other finished products.

As it wasn't in the stars for Wayne Sander to be a laborer in a factory, the same was true of Dr. Don.  

He went into the US Navy, and the navy sent him back to school.  At first he wasn’t overjoyed, wanting to go back to being a sailor, but gradually made the transition and saw it as his lot in life.

*     *     *

DR. DON WRITES: 

  

I got my BS at San Diego State University.  I helped form National University, started a new graduate program (Engineering Technology) and completed my Masters (Industrial Technology) there while teaching a class, lecturing in several, all while working full time as a researcher at General Dynamics in San Diego, CA.  Went on to complete my Doctorate (Engineering Psychology- Human Engineering) at California Pacific University.

*     *     *

Dr. Don went on from there to become a NASA scientist in ergonomics designing and testing the internal accommodations for comfort and efficacy of space capsules for astronauts, working for NASA more than thirty years. 

Then, despite several physical maladies including a broken spine, eye disease and diabetes, he found the time to teach, work as a volunteer to Operation Gratitude (for American military personnel stationed abroad), to keep up with his discipline so as to mentor graduate students at several universities, to maintain an e-mail “Memories” network of several hundred stretched across the globe, of mainly former residence of Clinton, Iowa, collating and dispersing these messages daily to interested parties.

 

Like Wayne Sander and yours truly, now in our 80’s, Dr. Don has not slowed down.  He says he enjoys helping people, and must "keep on, keep'n on." 

He and Wayne Sander personifies the wisdom of the Shakespeare:

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help others without helping himself."

*     *     *

AUTHOR/PHILOSOPHER CHARLES D. HAYES, 

QUINTESSENTIAL AUTODIDACT

In the early 1990’s, I received a manuscript from a man in Alaska, who told me he worked for British Petroleum, and had written a book, and was wondering if I would give it a look.

This kind of thing happens often to people who write books.  I often ignore the request or write a curt note that I wish the prospective author well.  That was not the case with this manuscript.

I started to read it, made notes and comments on the margins of the pages, finally reading the complete manuscript, then sitting there, pausing and saying to myself, “Wow, can this guy ever write!”

It went beyond that.  Charles Hayes was obviously well read and an original thinker with a clear point of view, and a passion to express it. 

I shared my regard for the writing with my wife, BB, and said I was going to send the book back with my marginal comments. 

“You will do no such thing!" she declared, then more softly, "Jim, he won’t have any idea what you’re saying because nobody can read your handwriting,” which was true.

So, I typed my comments, which amounted to a small book in themselves.  

“Do you think he will be offended?” I asked her.

She looked at me with that beautiful twinkle in her eye, and said, “You’d die to have someone do that with your writing.”  

It was true.  It was also true that it has never happened.

That was my introduction to Charles D. Hayes, a self-confessed high school dropout, an ex-US Marine, a petroleum worker, and a guy I suspect read as much if not more than I did. 

That first book was “Proving You’re Qualified: Strategies for Competent People without College Degrees" (1995).

He would follow that with “Self-University” (1996), “Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in a Postmodern World” (1998), “Training Yourself: The 21^st Century Credential” (2000), “Portals in a Northern Sky,” (2003, a novel), “The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning” (2004), and others.

*     *     *

CHARLES D. HAYES WRITES:

Jim,

I have a slew of essays on the LA Progressive under my name of the list of authors. I thought you might find this one of interest.

http://www.laprogressive.com/police-abuse-driven-primal-instincts/ 

Charles D. Hayes

http://amazon.com/author/charlesdhayes

http://www.autodidactic.com/

http://www.septemberuniversity.org/          

http://self-university.blogspot.com/

http://septemberuniversity.blogspot.com/

If interested, check them out.

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DR. FISHER’S FINAL THOUGHTS ON AUTODIDACTS:

Longshoreman turned philosopher never went to school.  He became blind as a child, his sight not restored until he was nineteen.   Once he could see, he discovered a voracious appetite for the printed word.

I’ve read most everything he’s written or written about him.  

In 1950, he collected his thoughts in a handwritten manuscript, and looked to see who was the best publisher to contact.  He chose Harper & Row, and sent his manuscript to that publisher.

The book was published in 1951 as “The True Believer: Thoughts of the Nature of Mass Movements.” 

I read the book when it came out, and thought although young, that it was different.  At the time, I had no idea that he was totally self-educated.

Then in the late 1960's, Hoffer appeared on CBS Television with pundit Eric Sevareid.  It was a fascinating two-hour free flowing conversation.  Instant fame followed.  The tag, “true believer” became part of our language to describe the "herd mentality."  

Hoffer is every man.  Yet, I doubt if he would be inclined to take hundreds of eclectic courses like Wayne Sander, or to collect impressive college credentials like both Wayne and Dr. Don.  I see him more like Charles D. Hayes, the autodidact.

He was asked where he got his ideas?  Was it from auditing university courses, listening to esteemed lecturers, or attending seminal seminars?

“I am like the fellow who stands on the street corner," he said, "Just waiting for what I'm looking for to come by."  He was talking about books that lit his fire.  I can relate to that.

It has been a stunning discovery in my dotage that I don’t like the intimacy of a discussion group, as clearly does Wayne Sander.  It should have come as no surprise having always preferred studying alone throughout my academic studies.  I don't like crowds, but paradoxically, love living in a city of millions of people.  

This is offered simply to point out that we autodidact are not a homogeneous group.  

Given these idiosyncrasies, people, from every quadrant of the globe are visiting my website, reading my blog and books (with all their malapropisms and solecisms) because they see me as one of them, struggling with what I am and what I have to the best of my ability, and without apologies.  

These readers touch my heart, people attempting to know themselves, love themselves, and respect themselves, people struggling against great odds to accept themselves in a world that is not always obliging. 

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MEISTER ECKHART (13th century mystique) writes:

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart.  We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves!  Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s, cover the soul!  Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

We live in an eternal now, which in itself is always new.  The autodidacts you have been introduced to know this only too well.

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