SEARCH FOR THE REAL PARENTS OF MY SOUL (Continued)

“SEARCH FOR THE REAL PARENTS OF MY SOUL”

(Continued)

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

© October 31, 2014

NOTE:

When I first made this inquiry into my religious beliefs, calling it a “Search for the Real Parents of My Soul,” I was amazed to find how little people have changed in more than 2,000 years. 

True, 2,000 years ago in the “cradle of civilization,” religion had a more prominent role essentially controlling all aspects of life, whereas today it struggles to be relevant.

That said people behave much the same around social class, clout, power, politics, and economics with the few or the social and intellectual elite (“insiders”) expecting to dictate the terms for the many or the social and intellectual excluded (“outsiders”).

The law and the justice system, then, was just as ambiguous as it is today, for those that discharge justice and the law, today, are equally as ambivalent as they were then. 

Those who are totally fed up with religion, reading this, may think “what a waste!”  But they would be wrong.  

Culture and knowledge and know how have ridden on the backs of these souls that have secured our destiny as a surviving species.  It is not called “the cradle of civilization” for nothing. 

Should you become pessimistic about what is happening in Syria, Iraq, Israel and Palestine today, you will find precedence for it here.  We go through these hard patches and have since we stood up and walked on two legs.

What little we know about this period relies on the historian Joseph or Josephus, whichever you prefer.  Sometimes I wonder if he might have been more of a novelist than a historian

*     *     *     *     *

ENTER THE SADDUCEES

The Sadducees were a sect or group of Jews that were active in Judea during the Second Temple period, starting from the second century A.D. through the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70.

The sect was identified by Josephus with the upper social and economic echelon of Judean society. As a whole, the sect fulfilled various political, social, and religious roles, including maintaining the Temple. The Sadducees are often compared to other contemporaneous sects, including the Pharisees and the Essenes. Their sect is believed to have become extinct sometime after the destruction of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, but it has been speculated that the later Karaites may have had some roots or connections with Sadducean views.

According to Abraham Geiger, the Sadducee sect of Judaism drew their name from Zadok, the first High Priest of ancient Israel to serve in the First Temple, with the leaders of the sect proposed as the Kohanim (Priests, the "sons of Zadok", descendant of Eleazar, son of Aaron).

In any event, the name Zadok, being related to the right or the just, could be indicative of their aristocratic status in society in the initial period of their existence.

Furthermore, Josephus mentions in Antiquities of the Jews in the time of Boethus:

"...one Judas, a Gaulonite, of a city whose name was Gamala, who taking with him Sadduc, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to a revolt,...".

Christian historian and novelist Paul L. Maier notes:

"It seems not improbable to me that this Sadduc, the Pharisee, was the very same man of whom the rabbis speak, as the unhappy but undesigning occasion of the impiety or infidelity of the Sadduccees; nor perhaps had the men this name of the Sadduccees till this very time, though they were a distinct sect long before."

The similarity of Sadduc to the Zadok above, varying largely in transliteration, lends credence to that account. The contextual inclusion of Boethus and Sadduc implies they were most likely contemporaries.

The Second Temple Period is the period in Ancient Israel between the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in B.C. 516 and its destruction by the Romans in A.D. 70.

Throughout the Second Temple Period, Jerusalem saw several shifts in rule. Alexander’s conquest of the Mediterranean world brought an end to Persian control of Jerusalem (B.C. 539 - 334) and ushered in the Hellenistic period.

The Hellenistic period, which extended from B.C. 334 - 63, is known today for the spread of Hellenistic influence. This included an expansion of culture, including an appreciation of theater, and admiration of the human body.

After the death of Alexander in B.C. 323, his generals divided the empire among themselves and for the next 30 years, they fought for control of the empire. The Ptolemies emerged with control of Judea in B.C. 301 - 200, but only held it until the Seleucids 200-167 took control in B.C. 200.

King Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria, a Seleucid, disrupted whatever peace there had been in Judea when he desecrated the temple in Jerusalem and forced Jews to violate the Torah. Most prominent of the rebel groups were the Maccabees, led by Mattathias the Hasmonean and his son Judah the Maccabee. Though the Maccabees rebelled against the Seleucids in B.C. 164, Seleucid rule did not end for another 20 years. The Maccabean (a.k.a. Hasmonean) rule lasted until B.C. 63, when the Roman general Pompey, having grown uncomfortable with the dynasty’s growing power, conquered Jerusalem.

Thus began the Roman period of Judea, leading to the creation of the province of Roman Judea in A.D. 6 and extending into the 4th century, well beyond the end of the Second Temple Period.

Cooperation between the Romans and the Jews was strongest during the reigns of Herod and Herod Agrippa I (his grandson). However, the Romans moved power out of the hands of vassal kings and into the hands of Roman administrators, beginning with the Census of Quirinius in A.D. 6.

The First Jewish–Roman War broke out in A.D. 66. After a few years of conflict, the Romans retook Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, bringing an end to the Second Temple Period (A.D. 70).

THE ROLE OF THE TEMPLE

During the Persian period, the Temple became more than the center of worship in Judea after its reconstruction in B.C. 516, it served as the center of society.

It makes sense, then, that priests held important positions as official leaders outside of the Temple. The democratizing forces of the Hellenistic period lessened and shifted the focus of Judaism away from the Temple and in the 3rd century B.C., a class of scribes began to emerge.

New organizations and “social elites” appeared. It was also during this time that the high priesthood - the members of which often identified as Sadducees - was developing a reputation for corruption.

Questions about the legitimacy of the Second Temple and its Sadduceean leadership freely circulated in Judean society. Sects began to form during the Maccabean reign. The Temple in Jerusalem was the formal center of political and governmental leadership in ancient Israel, although its power was often contested and disputed by fringe groups.

After the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Sadducees appear only in a few references in the Talmud. In the beginnings of Karaism, the followers of Anan ben David were called "Sadducees" and set a claim of the former being a historical continuity from the latter.

A book discovery in 1910 mentions the Karaite sage Ya'akov al-Qirqisani, which led to a renewal of the hypothesis of Sadducean influences on the early Karaites.

The Sadducee concept of the mortality of the soul is reflected on by Uriel Acosta who mentions them in his writings. Acosta was referred to as a Sadducee in Karl Gutzkow's play, "The Sadducees in Amsterdam" (1834).

The religious responsibilities of the Sadducees included the maintenance of the Temple in Jerusalem. Their high social status was reinforced by their priestly responsibilities, as mandated in the Torah.

The Priests were responsible for performing sacrifices at the Temple, the primary method of worship in Ancient Israel. This also included presiding over sacrifices on the three festivals of pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Jewish religious beliefs and social status were mutually reinforcing, as the Priesthood often represented the highest class in Judean society. Sadducees and the priests were not completely synonymous. Not all priests, high priests, and aristocrats were Sadducees; many were Pharisees, and many were not members of any group at all.

The Sadducees rejected the Oral Law as proposed by the Pharisees. Rather, they saw the Torah as the sole source of divine authority. The written law, in its depiction of the priesthood, corroborated the power and enforced the hegemony of the Sadducees in Judean society.

According to Josephus, the Sadducees believed that: There is no fate; God does not commit evil; man has free will; “man has the free choice of good or evil”; the soul is not immortal; there is no afterlife, and there are no rewards or penalties after death.

The Sadducees rejected the belief in resurrection of the dead, which was a central tenet believed by Early Christians. The Sadducees supposedly believed in the traditional Jewish concept of Sheol for those who had died.

According to the New Testament, the Pharisees also believed in the resurrection, but Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, claims that the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people would be reincarnated and “pass into other bodies,” while “the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment.”

According to the Pharisees, spilt water becomes impure through its pouring. Sadducees deny that this is sufficient grounds for Tumah (impurity).  Many Sadducee-Pharisee disputes revolve around issues of Tumah and purity.

The emphasis on purity is characteristic of priestly groups, who often utilized their perceptions of “holiness” and “unholiness” to enforce their power.

According to Jewish law, daughters inherit when there are no sons; otherwise, the sons inherit. The Pharisees posit that if a deceased son left only one daughter, then she shares the inheritance with the sons of her grandfather. The Sadducees suggest that it is impossible for the granddaughter to have a more favorable relationship to her grandfather than his own daughter does, and thus reject this ruling. This ruling is a testament to the Sadducean emphasis on patriarchal descent.

The Sadducees demand that the master pay for damages caused by his slave. The Pharisees impose no such obligation, as the slave may intentionally cause damage in order to see the liability for it brought on his master.

The Pharisees posit that false witnesses are executed if the verdict is pronounced on the basis of their testimony— even if not yet actually carried out. The Sadducees argue that false witnesses are executed only if the death penalty has already been committed on the falsely accused.

The Jewish community of the Second Temple period is often defined by its sectarian and fragmented attributes. Josephus, in Antiquities, contextualizes the Sadducees as opposed to the Pharisees and the Essenes.

The Sadducees are also notably distinguishable from the growing Jesus movement, which later evolved into Christianity. These groups differed in their beliefs, social statuses, and sacred texts.

Though the Sadducees produced no primary works themselves, their attributes can be derived from other contemporaneous texts, namely, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and later, the Mishnah and Talmud. Overall, within the hierarchy, the Sadducees represented an aristocratic, wealthy, and traditional elite.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are often attributed to the Essenes, suggest clashing ideologies and social positions between the Essenes and the Sadducees. In fact, some scholars suggest that the Essenes began as a group of renegade Zadokites, which would suggest that the group itself had priestly, and thus Sadducean origins.

Within the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Sadducees are often referred to as Manasseh. The Scrolls suggest that the Sadducees (Manasseh) and the Pharisees (Ephraim) became religious communities that were distinct from the Essenes, the true Judah.

Clashes between the Essenes and the Sadducees are depicted in the Pesher on Nahum, which states:

 “They [Manasseh] are the wicked ones...whose reign over Israel will be brought down...his wives, his children, and his infant will go into captivity. His warriors and his honored ones will perish by the sword.”

The reference to the Sadducees as those who reign over Israel corroborates their aristocratic status as opposed to the more fringe group of Essenes. Furthermore, it suggests that the Essenes challenged the authenticity of the rule of the Sadducees, blaming the downfall of ancient Israel and the siege of Jerusalem on their impiety. The Dead Sea Scrolls brand the Sadduceean elite as those who broke the covenant with God in their rule of the Judean state, and thus became targets of divine revenge.

The New Testament, specifically the books of Mark and Matthew, describe anecdotes that hint at hostility between the Jesus movement and the Sadduceean establishment.

These disputes manifest themselves on both theological and social levels. Mark describes how the Sadducees challenged Jesus’ belief in the Resurrection of the Dead. Jesus subsequently defends his belief in the resurrection against Sadduceean resistance, stating, 

“... and as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.”

Jesus challenges the reliability of the Sadducees’ interpretation of Biblical doctrine, the authority of which enforces the power of the Sadduceean priesthood. The Sadducees address the issue of resurrection through the lens of marriage, which 

“hinted at their real agenda: the protection of property rights through patriarchal marriage that perpetuated the male lineage."

Furthermore, Matthew depicts the Sadducees as a “brood of Vipers,” and a perversion of the true Israel. The New Testament thus constructs the identity of Christianity in opposition to the Sadducees.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees are historically seen as antitheses of one another. Josephus, the author of the most extensive historical account of the Second Temple Period, gives an extensive account of Jewish sectarianism in both Jewish War and Antiquities.

In Antiquities, he describes:

“The Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their father, which are not written in the law of Moses, and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them and say that we are to esteem those observance to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.”

The Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic use of the Oral Law to enforce their claims to power, citing the Written Torah as the sole manifestation of divinity.

The Rabbis, who are traditionally seen as the descendants of the Pharisees, describe the similarities and differences between the two sects in Mishnah Yadaim.

The Mishnah explains that the Sadducees state, 

“So too, regarding the Holy Scriptures, their impurity is according to (our) love for them. But the books of Homer, which are not beloved, do not defile the hands.”

The Sadducees thus accuse the Pharisees as the opponents of traditional Judaism because of their susceptibility and assimilation into the Hellenistic world. When synthesized, one can discern that the Pharisees represented mainstream Judaism in the Hellenistic world, while the Sadducees represented a more aristocratic elite. Despite this, a passage from the Book of Acts suggests that both Pharisees and Sadducees collaborated in the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court.

*     *     *

BREAKTHROUGH OCTOBER 2014 -- WILLIAM L. LIVINGSTON, IV

Breakthrough October 2014

REFERENCE:

William L. Livingston IV, an engineer, inventor, author, innovator, and pioneer in the interest of making this a better, safer, less wasteful and more productive world for us all, has been working on this current project for several years.  This is your introduction to him and his work. He is my mentor and friend.  It is offered here for your consideration.

*     *     *     *     *  

Everyone knows breakthroughs come in various kinds and sizes. The breakthrough announced here is in social system productivity. The noteworthy dimension of this breakthrough is the huge size of its available collective impact.

The math of its extravagant benefit is simple. This breakthrough applies to the productivity of any social system producing goods or services.

The typical boost in social system productivity in application experience is 20%.

The 2014 productivity of all the social systems around the globe, measured by the value of goods and services produced, the World Gross National Product, is $40 Trillion. By multiplication, the economic value of the benefit of this breakthrough to the world GNP is $8 Trillion/annum.

This breakthrough in productivity has an interesting set of attributes:


 The cost of the program is trivial. Its ROI computes in the many hundreds.

 No changes in facilities or personnel is necessary. Nothing is required of management.

 The attained positive transformation is fast. Program success is established and obvious in a couple of days. Tangible, measurable benefits start appearing in a couple of weeks.

 The program is transparent, natural law based, incontrovertible. Nothing is hidden. It has the characteristics necessary for universal, unconditional application.

 The need for this program cannot diminish. Its market opportunity is continuously replenished by business as usual.

 While the benefits to the participants sustain indefinitely after the program ends, eventually, with turnover, productivity maintenance will be necessary.

 There are various collateral benefits beyond the base economic 20%. Transformation brings a tide that raises all boats. There are many beneficiaries.

 Applications of the breakthrough can be demonstrated in your shop in a day and/or you can visit an application in process. One day of first-hand experience will do it.

To express interest in auditing an application, contact vitalith@att.net

Do or do not. There is no try. Yoda

"THE PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY"

“PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY”

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

© October 27, 2014

REFERENCE:

Excerpt from second edition of “Time Out for Sanity!” (2014) in a chapter titled “The Refreshing Turf of the Outsider.”

*     *     *

Problems become personal and well beyond comprehension when a person moves into adulthood with still the mind and disposition of the child with insatiable needs and wants. Careerism becomes the critical definer for some who lead double lives going along to get along at work bringing out the worst in them, while in private they lead secret lives that sometimes destroy them. 

This is the gravitational pull between exploitation and oppression where everything is on the table and everyone is fair game. Claude Levi-Strauss calls this pragmatically, “the principle of reciprocity.”

He asks us to imagine making an initial offer of a favor to a stranger. It becomes of special significance whether it takes the form of a few friendly words, the invitation to one’s home, or some helpful suggestion. It entails the risk of rejection of the offer itself, or the risk of rejection of the overture implied by failure to reciprocate and enter into a friendly relationship.

By taking this risk, an individual brings to an end the complete indifference between himself and the other person. It forces on the other a choice of two alternatives, as Levi-Strauss notes:

“From now on it must become a relationship either of cordiality or hostility.”

It will not remain neutral.

This is especially pertinent to me. It worked precisely as Levi-Strauss describes it here when I worked in South Africa.  By nature, I am a very private person, and the South African manager director was very gregarious and social. We worked closely together in forming a new chemical company composed of my American subsidiary, a British affiliate and a South African specialty chemical company.  He assumed the social aspect was an automatic extension of our working relationship. Complicating matters further, we were both young and with similar young families.

From the very beginning, he went out of his way to include my family in his, which entailed a very active social life, making my family essentially part of his. When I failed to reciprocate, the die was cast. Our relationship went from warm to cool to cold, becoming implicit adversaries for no other reason. He was by choice an insider, and loved it, while I was by choice an outsider who had never joined the club, which he could never fathom, and for this reason became quite paranoid. We were never able to bridge the gap.

An original mind is one thing. An independent mind is quite another. A private disposition is still another complication. An imitative mind cues on different sources for its satisfaction, as does a dependent socially oriented mind. 

Each of these mindsets has different needs and expresses them in different ways, always looking for reciprocation for satisfaction. 

An original mind uses other sources seeing old things in new ways. An independent mind believes in no contributing dependency.  To put this in a college student context, an independent mind would prefer to study alone.  In contrast, a dependent mind has little interest in originality or independence, restless when being alone, and therefore develops a nervous but carefree symbiotic relationship with others on the fly or on the serendipity of experience. 

A private disposition is often taken as arrogance, while a social disposition is commonly perceived as superficial and insincere.  “The principle of reciprocity” shows just how difficult it is for minds to meet and remain authentic.

When the pressure is great to conform to a social calculus, and the creative person is not of such a mind, creativity is likely to be buried in compliance, not cooperation.  Cooperation is always voluntary.  Still, there are frightfully clever imaginative sybarites ready to put their hooks into original thinkers for their own purposes.  Reciprocity is always at work, always something for something.

Appalling, yet comic, our culture encourages piggyback thinking, while professing to support originality. This is the subversive side of teamwork. We are well schooled in conformity, in being tentative, and circumspect looking for the ideas of others to latch on to. Reinforcing this, we join a new company and are told in orientation, “we are a family.”

As absurd as the idea of family, it is meant to show mutual respect, establish trust, and put aside differences in terms of the nuclear metaphor of love and togetherness in reciprocity harmony.

David Cooper has something to say about this in “Death of the Family“(1970):

“The appearance of love is subversive to any good social ordering of our lives. Far more than being statistically abnormal, love is dangerous; it might even spread through the aseptic shield that we get each other to erect around ourselves. What we are socially conditioned to need and expect is not love, but security. Security means the full and repeatedly reinforced affirmation of the family.”

Cooper goes on to point out that there is a certain gluing together of people based on the sense of one’s own incompleteness.  We seldom think of the work situation in these terms but it was true for me.

I once told my mentor and boss, Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth, my motivation to “behave” was not driven by fear of reprisal, but love and respect for him. It clearly made him feel self-conscious, even suspect.  When the affirmation of the family has a cold corporate design, it results in people seeing it as the basis of their security. We are not comfortable with the idea of love of work for itself much less passion separate from security. It speaks to Watts’ “wisdom of insecurity” because real security and non-alienated love are threatening to such a corporate structure. Only with unencumbered love of doing is it possible to get past security.

The corporate basis of security permeates all institutions including academia. Scholarship is often a measure of reinforcing the obvious social bias, a reactive construct that applauds convention and condemns constructions that disturb consensus perceptions.

The academic scholar goes on the briefest of limbs and therefore has little to lose in the matter, but much to protect. Criticism within this framework is a safe profession. It is made of one part reaction to the work of another, and one part walking in cadence to the drum roll of the majority. Such conforming scholarship is like an eating frenzy on the carcass of original thought.

From an early age, we hear the bromides, “nothing ventured nothing gained,” and “actions speak louder than words.” It is the con we play on ourselves that outsiders will have no part. They see ideas of original thinkers are torn to shreds while most fail to appreciate the irony.

We are not aware of this irony because we are so busy being busy. We are on a treadmill not unlike that of our pet gerbil and still see ourselves as superior beings going places, doing things, and making progress. We have the mental equipment to dig deep into our souls and find the source of our light, but for most of us that fun is left to the outsider.

Have you ever felt as if we are all on the same ship without a helmsman steering the course? The lack of original thought supports that impression. Every time “Freud” is mentioned it speaks to this deficiency. We can’t seem to ignore him, or get past him.

We echo our contempt for him. American sociologist Peter Blau (1918-2002) sees this as a desire to fit in, be one of the crowd, resonate with its sentiments, wave the same banner, and grunt with the same gusto, while having little sense of the collective nonsense of it all. Blau writes:

“Power that is exercised with moderation and confers ample benefits in return for submission elicits social approval that legitimates the authority of its command.”

That is why most churchgoers are docile, workers dependent, and citizens obliging. Our behavior resounds with the soundless cry: feed me, cloth me, give me access to exchanging bodily fluids, and my soul is yours.

Our debt to Einstein in science, Freud in psychiatry, Skinner and Adler in psychology, and others in their professions, is so staggering that I wonder if they have doomed us to our fate. It is as if we are on a ship of strangers with the only thing held in common is our estrangement.

If you wonder how Watts and Hoffer, and others like them, have avoided this fate, it is quite simple: they were never members of the passenger manifesto, more likely stowaways.

They might be on board for a time, legitimately, as entertaining curiosities but no more, as they are essentially invisible. Because of this they have escaped idolatry, of being placed on a pedestal only to be knocked off it at the insider’s pleasure. Outsiders never have to worry about pedestals.

In the worship of intellectual celebrity, there are the “ins” and “outs” and “no accounts.” Watts and Hoffer fall somewhere near the “no accounts.” It is permissible, even proper to cuss and discuss men of the status of Freud and Skinner, providing you belong. Celebrities are “in” and “out,” and then “in” again like the changing weather experienced in academia as in politics and as in the entertainment industry.

Watts and Hoffer are complete outsiders. Misfits can choose to rant and rave to their hearts’ content as few are paying attention.  Their ranting is a nuisance factor, but occasionally a welcomed diversion to the boring climate of intellectual “ins.”

Eric Sevareid (1912-1992), the commentator of television’s CBS News, discovered Hoffer in reading his book, “The True Believer” (1951). 

In the fall of 1967, CBS aired the interview called “Eric Hoffer: The Passionate State of Mind.” The program lasted an hour. Hoffer spoke passionately on a number of subjects, including the U. S. policy in Viet Nam, the importance of Israel, the failure of leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, and the uncanny character of President Lyndon Johnson. This was very controversial stuff in 1967.

Despite this, perhaps because of it, the nation so tired of a blanket of insincerity from every outlet of the media, Hoffer became a national curiosity, gruff, almost primordial in stature, with a thick German ascent, and clipped comments. Indeed, he was a breath of fresh air in the adolescent climate of spoiled bratomania that existed at the time with nobody in charge.

The nightly news depicted American young people’s latest angst, pranks, and protests ad nauseum. Hoffer played “grandpa America” to a fatigued and confused nation consoling it with his confidence that “all would work out in the end.”

He was a fantast but fantasies help when society is split down the middle with double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation with a pathological mindset that clings to the cognitive dissonance that it has done nothing wrong. 

“Hoffer made millions feel better about their country,” Sevareid reflected to explain Hoffer’s television success. It also was obvious Americans had no intentions of changing, which anyone who had read “The True Believer” would clearly understand.

One of Hoffer’s intriguing metaphors was the railroad. He said American railroads, unlike European’s, never broke down because “Americans believe in preventive maintenance.” No sooner said then American tracks appeared faulty, unscheduled trains collided, rail bridges collapsed, and the efficiency metaphor proved to be quite leaky. 

[In December, 2013, we found this slide into the lackadaisical extended to an engineer operating a Metro-North Railroad train into New York City. He went into a curve going 82 mph which was nearly three times the speed allowed.  Four people were killed and seventy were injured. His defense?  According to his lawyer, he was suffering “highway hypnosis,” or in the sense of this essay, operating robotically on automatic pilot.] 

This collision with reality did not deter Hoffer's popularity as he was a curiosity. Readers and television viewers found his mass movement and crowd theories entertaining, and his confidence in America reassuring. They read his books that were brought out by an “in” publisher, Harper & Row.

His popularity was even among the normally cautious consumers of the printed word. There was something of an earthier Emerson to his epigrams. They spoke to these independent sleepy minds that wanted to feel better about their country. He dignified peripatetic readers and eclectic thinkers who were tired of the inclusion-exclusion metaphor. They needed to find some sense in the nonsense of the times. One thing his readers had in common despite the evidence to the contrary: they believed the myth that they were their own man.

While Freud and Skinner devotees have become institutionalized, Hoffer’s readers have remained floaters. Freud and Skinner have set anchor, confident of their place and space, while Hoffer sees no Nirvana around the bend of the river.

Hoffer passes the shoreline of late nineteenth and early twentieth century that is emboldened with Freud and Skinner markers.

Have these "in side" thinkers arrived? I believe they think they have, but what have they found? Hoffer makes no claim to originality, or to having found anything. He is just moving on the river. He has no universal “nature of man” theory, only a kinship with the giants of the past as student. He knows their ideas are like this river, always changing in profundity, sometimes comforting, often confounding, then contradicting, as they push against what is known to what is not, comfortable as he moves on as the quintessential common man.

When we drop anchor, and cry, “Eureka! I’ve found it,” we are in trouble. It would seem a navigational weakness common to thinkers today and our recent past. In “Fragments of a Philosophy,” I write:

“The amateur thinker can be defined as having the ability to articulate the world of ideas in broad terms comprehensible if not immediately applicable to the average man. He is a doer who thinks out of life. Compare this to the preference for technical language of the specialist. Specialization provides a place to hide from the masses in the cloistered abbey of omniscience.

Instead of substance, the average man is offered the dribble of inauthentic syntax to accommodate his vernacular. He is not the audience. He is a distraction. To console him he is given a few new words and terms that become popular without insight or understanding. In Iowa, we call that feeding slop to the pigs.”

*     *     *

DOING AS A CREATIVE TOOL!

DOING AS A CREATIVE TOOL!

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

© October 24, 2014

REFERENCE:

This is an excerpt taken from “TIME OUT FOR SANITY!”  I am currently in the process of editing, revising and proofreading for the book’s second edition.

*     *     *

There are breakthroughs that receive little note. I happen to be given a spirited boost when I had the privilege to observe fourth graders at Anona Elementary in Largo, Florida. So moved was I

that I wrote a “letter to the editor” of The Clearwater Sun (March 17, 1972).

Mrs. Kampouris was the teacher of a reading class. Her fourth graders put on a program from beginning to end without her assistance. They wrote, directed and acted in the presentation. I

can’t remember seeing creativity expressed more delightfully. It was impressive being a kids’ show, but even more so because everyone was having so much fun.

The key of course was the teacher. Her subtle guidance and patient concern enhanced their individual worth. Each of us has an immense reservoir of untapped creative energy. The need to perform, to use that precious store is part of our frustration as our society is not designed as much for participation as it is for watching others perform.

How many more painters, writers, and scientists, indeed, how many more creative artisans in publishing and business might be imaginatively and happily employed should the efforts of this

fine teacher segue into their adult lives?

The fourth grade program rose naturally out of a word play with tongue twisting silly phrases. It continued with several students explaining their respective projects: one was making a facsimile

of a rocket, another a pencil holder, and so on.

Each demonstration stood out for its personal touch as thoughts and ideas were expressed in a comfortable vocabulary.  It was apparent they were at ease with language, and used words

as a natural tool in that context.

Poetry reading followed, and all the poems were original works. The handling of words here caught my fancy. Somehow, as expressed by a child, love of people, places, animals and life resonates with the mind. It comes across with sincerity in direct and simple language devoid of false urbanity or artificial complexity.

Mrs. Kampouris revealed her genius in the next phase. Asked to imagine themselves as a simple inanimate everyday object, these budding artists expressed their thoughts on paper. She had helped this suggestion along by placing an object in front of them—pencil, spool, paper clip, etc.—and asked them to create a story about the object. As a writer myself, I know you have to make like a child to energize wondering, which is the chemistry of creativity.

And then we were treated to the play. While it was entertaining, the banter and giddiness that went on over botched lines, cue or prop failures (one boy lost his beard) only added to its delight.  The fact that this was a reading class is relevant to today. So many children and adults are such poor readers that they take the word of others before checking out information on their own.

This often happens in industry when workers don’t or can’t read the instructions of their work, and go on working on the basis of what a colleague says about the procedure. Since this is often incomplete or erroneous, the quality of the work suffers.

The point is that reading can and should be a pleasant experience.  It can and just might push the bar up to higher expectations and wider horizons. These fourth graders are learning that reading is not a chore but a delight and part of the creative process.

Reading for them has been made an integral part of doing. Mrs K has not partitioned reading from life or brandished a book list of “must” books to be read.  She has not made reading an escape from life but an integral part of its discovery. She has brought language and books and ideas to life for these youngsters. Mrs. K may never know the true import of her teaching model on her students, but the twinkle in her eyes belies this and suggests she already does.

Like many things, the move from spontaneity or “letting go” and doing, to being up tight and following rules passively is a gradual one; so gradual that it is not perceived as happening. We continue to think we are “doing our own thing,” when it is precisely the same thing that everyone else is doing as if responding to a metronome on cue.

Once regions of the country looked quite different from each other; now they all look the same. Once cities had a distinctive individualism to them; now they all have similar glass and steel high rises with almost identical silhouettes.

Should we be able to reconnect with the sparkle of Mrs. K’s model, gone would be the necessity to collect art, for everyone would be an artist. Gone would be millionaire entertainers and celebrities, for the need for their services would have evaporated, as we would have created our own. Even the games scientists’ play would be open to us.

Education with a natural connection to learning fulfills its Greek meaning, which is “to discover.” Gone, then, is the necessity to collect a briefcase of degrees, or to develop a copious curriculum vitae, as the quality of contribution would take precedence to credentials. And gone would be the necessity to pay homage to another man’s mind for we would be too busy using our own.

Some forty years later, 2011 to be exact, I was asked to evaluate essays of eight and nine-year-olds on what the local library meant to them. More than forty young people submitted their work. The library was located in an upscale neighborhood close to the university. So, not surprisingly, many of the essays were quite literate, showing embellishments that suggested parental influence. This included state-of-the-arts Microsoft Word printing and vocabularies of the precocious.

My interest was in content, not context, and how the theme of the exercise was conveyed. Of all the essays, one stood head and shoulders above all the others.

It was handwritten, and carefully so, but it was the content that was stunning. The author claimed that the library was a magic kingdom to him, where worlds he did not know existed could be explored as if they were in his dreams.

The essay literally jumped off the page with its excitement, wonder, and zest for the privilege to have this “magical place” so close to home. In my comments, I envisioned a writing career for this person, as the magic went beyond its author to make connection with me, the reader.

When first place was announced, a small African American boy with a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear, jumped up and raced forward to collect his prize. Obviously, the other three evaluators of this contest agreed with me, a contest sponsored by Director Armand Ternak and his staff at the Temple Terrace Library, Temple Terrace, Florida.

*     *     *

PS My son, Michael Fisher, was in that class of Mrs. Kampouris in 1972.

"TIME OUT FOR SANITY!" -- An excerpt from 2nd edition

“TIME OUT FOR SANITY!” – An excerpt from 2nd edition

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

© October 23, 2014  

“Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock, for when it is once passed there is no recalling it.”

—Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish satirist and author of “Gulliver’s Travels”

This essay was first written in another form more than 40 years ago. The “afterword” and “after afterword” are new. They are written to bridge the gap between yesterday and today, illustrating what experience has taught me by looking back to see ahead.

My original reason for writing this essay was to stimulate the conscience of ordinary souls like myself, not scholars, not dilettantes, not specialists. I desired the reader to ponder things that had gotten in our way. With that premise in mind, I made these assumptions:

The first assumption is that I claim to be no authority, but write from my perceptions, reading, and experience. Social critic Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) stated it well: “If you want to write about life, the only data you have is your own life. Take someone like Tolstoy.  You can identify in his novels every character. Serious writers use data of their own experience of living.”

The second assumption is that we all have an interest in what makes people act the way they do. I am trained in the social and behavioral sciences, yet echo psychologist philosopher Sigmund Koch‘s ((1917-1996) caution: “Psychology cannot be a coherent science.” Healthy skepticism is encouraged. I am simply asking you to compare what is written here with what you are experiencing today.

The third assumption is that we are all born wonderers and therefore all philosophers. Contemporary philosopher Alan Watts (1915-1973) captures this sentiment: “A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gapes and stares at what sensible people take for granted, a person who cannot get rid of the feeling that the barest of facts of everyday life are unbelievably odd. Aristotle put it best: the beginning of philosophy is wonder.”

The fourth assumption is that we are all born storytellers. Our lives are the tapestry of great novels. Each episode in that life is the fabric of a compelling short story. The sharing of the story touches universal themes of a common humanity. Everyone is kin to everyone else. No matter what the writer’s experience, it belongs to the reader as well.

The fifth and final assumption is that we are all selling something.   From the moment we rise in the morning until we lay our heads down on our pillow at night, we are selling our worth, ideas, and our appeal to others. What follows then is a passion play of self in the context of another time that seems remarkably like our present.

Today (2014) is an electrifying time to be alive with challenge and opportunity competing with our limited time and energy.  Are we in a cage of our own making, or are we free to be all that we could become and can be? As you ponder this, think in terms of psychological time. You will find once you make a decision, make a choice, and make a commitment that the rest is anticlimactic, demonstrating that you are in charge.

Clearly, we possess the equipment to produce miracles when so often we stagnate and purchase misery instead. My wonder is if this is a chronic illness embedded in our cultural DNA for which we have no escape. If so, are we content to remain complacently stuck, or are we ready to become unstuck? It is a matter of choice. Once the choice is made the mind and body, indeed the spirit escapes its stuckness and soars beyond expectations. I know because it happened to me.

*     *     *

AUTHOR'S NOTE TO SECOND EDITION -- "TIME OUT FOR SANITY!"

About “Time Out for Sanity!”

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

© October 20, 2014

REFERENCE:

This is the introductory essay to the second edition of TIME OUT FOR SANITY!  I am in the process of proofreading the copy.

AUTHOR'S NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

I thought long and hard about writing this book. The problem was resolved when I convinced myself it could give the reader a new perspective on how we have come to be stuck in our false confidence with a possible way out.

While science is looking for a universal theory, social and economic thinkers seem to be looking for an ecumenical system that answers all the questions, public and private, scientific and historical, moral and aesthetic, individual and institutional. The result is that there is seemingly a constant clash between progressive and reactionary agendas. The obstructionists ignore the complexity of the problems being faced while progressives deny the existence of these problems and turn their attention to irrelevancies.

We see this in our institutions and commerce: in the family which has become an irrelevancy; in the school which despite pouring more and more money into education continues to produce an inferior product; in corporate commerce with its infallible authority and business as usual practices despite nearly throwing the United States as well as the world into another Great Depression; in the religious in which the focus has been more on preserving its survival than discharging its mission; and in government that stays the same, misses the changes, is unable or unwilling to face them, leaving the future up for grabs.

These institutions originally created to respond to real societal needs are no longer capable of fulfilling such needs. They have been transformed into mere impediments to human progress, in so doing, breeding their own tensions and diseases while generating their own false remedies.

Information Technology is defusing and decentralizing power in America; the impact of which we are only beginning to feel. Some obscure individual or collection of geeks, because of the way technology works today, can expose a company or, indeed, the government and have a disproportionate influence on outcomes. There are no secrets anymore.

Institutional power has maintained its hold on control because it controlled the secrets. Not anymore! This complicates matters considerably going forward, mainly, because little thought has been given to what has been lost for what has been gained.

Strife, conflict and competition between and among these too human institutions have sometimes bordered on the pathological.

What makes them so is that they keep promoting a hidden agenda and thus keep failing to perform their appointed function.  All forms of behavior are not rational, and as a consequence lead to various degrees of self-distortion and frustration.

Therefore, it is possible to analyze the situation correctly but impossible to predict behavioral outcomes.

Nothing is value free much as science would suggest to the contrary. The division between facts and values is a shallow fallacy for every thought involves a reflection, no less than every act a feeling. Values are personified in our general attitude to the world, in the way we think, see, believe, understand, discover and know a thing to be true or not.

The “self” is not a static entity. Nor are people dispassionate observers free from the values that bombard their senses. To attempt to escape this reality through rational detachment or self-deception is what existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre calls simply “bad faith.”

In revisiting this original essay written in the early 1970s, it was as if everything had changed, when nothing had changed at all except the costumes. So many parallels with our current pathology appear to justify a “Time Out for Sanity!”

Armed with cell phones, laptops, smartphones, Blackberrys, videophones, PlayStations, Game Boys, MP3’s, iPods, iPads, iPhones, or other mobiles soon available, continually producing more sophisticated digital tools that have become increasingly escape toys, we have sidetracked our evasive minds from an obsession with sex (1970s) to an obsession with cyberspace and social networking at a distance. Now, voyeuristic pixels have replaced tactile fantasies.

Unfortunately, not even the finest handheld electronics can save us from the shock of being stuck in the 1970s. Facts and fantasies are fused in time. Whatever our current proclivities, we are what we are by the interplay of these values, facts and fantasies on our delicate psyches.

Look around you, and tell me you don’t see people with glazed eyes running harder than ever and getting nowhere. It would appear that many if not most people don’t like what they are doing or where they are going, but have little idea what they would prefer to be doing or going. It is as if their lives are a fait accompli.

To live is to act. To act is to be doing something useful.  The self-conscious know this; the unconscious merely act.  Hence, we choose to act and manage our lives or our acts manage us.  This then allows us to play the victim.  

Where and what we are, may lead us to a state of stasis epitomized by the compulsive routine of a stationary exercise bike, retreat into a recreational gym, or a man cave at home.  Or it may find our eyes glued to some kind of a mobile texting and tweeting wherever we are. 

The retreat of the new century is different, but it is still a retreat that mirrors the 1970s.

We are on the precipice of moving from man the true believer to man the discriminating believer, to man not believing in anything at all, deceiving himself that he is living in the world on his own terms. 

We are on the abyss of man having no choice but to grow up, or throw himself into oblivion.

The question might be asked, "What if these things are necessary steps on the evolutionary path of our species, things we have to work through like phrases a child goes through growing up"

This seems, on the surface, a legitimate concern, but I plan to show in this book that this is the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  

Granted, "millennials," our newest generation, those born in the late 20th and early 21st century, don't seem to be buying into much of what they have inherited.  That includes their culture, the Establishment, and the status quo. 

To put this in perspective, four decades ago, a large rebellious contingent of society’s mainly young people decided to escape boring reality by retreating into a psychedelic wonderland.

They called themselves "hippies," changed their lifestyle, dress and moral code, and adopted the catchy slogan, "make love not war."

The Vietnam War was going on, and it was an unpopular war.  The point is that the war provided the rationale for an escape.  Young men of military draft age, said, "Hell, no, I won't go" (to Vietnam), and fled to Canada or joined a commune in southern California.

The irony is that millennials haven't had to be so obstreperous.  They haven't had to throw tirades or provoke authority figures.  They simply have ignored them.  They don't choose leaders, but don't see themselves as followers.  They do what comes to mind without much reflection, or pause to assess possible consequences.  To say they are superficially engaged is a moot point.

Millennials are not into counterculture as were hippies of the 1970s.  While they mirror each other in tacit disregard for the status quo, millennials are not into the idea of culture, or what that might imply.  Nor are they into rebellion.  They have their electronic pacifiers, and at the moment, that is sufficient to float their boat. 

The escape today from boring reality is into some electronic gizmo,  some gadget that may eventually fry their brains until they have no memory of the damage done.  Then they can operate on a schizophrenic high to rival the chemically induced psychedelic highs of the 1970s.

Time Out for Sanity! is written in the hopes that it causes the reader to ponder the choices made hoping that such choices will turn out to be blessings rather than not.  To that end, I wish all readers well.

—James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.,

Tampa, Florida

THE ASCENDANCY OF THE MILLENNIALS AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN!

THE ASCENDANCY OF THE MILLENNIALS AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN!

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

© October 19, 2014

NOTE:

We are not only in a new century, but have in our midst a new generation called “millennials.” Born in the very late twentieth century or the beginning of the twenty-first century, millennials look at life and us in a very different way. 

Joel Stein of Time magazine (May 20, 2013) captures a sense of this new generation.  Since I have several grandchildren that are millennials, I thought I’d add my own two cents with special acknowledgement to Joel Stein and his interesting piece.

*     *     *

The current generation of the young, known as the “millennials,” are not trying to take over the establishment, nor to fall in line with hierarchical authority, position power and its rights of infallibility and succession.  Instead, they are choosing to ignore the establishment and grow up without it.

They are accused of being lazy, narcissistic, not centered, going with the flow, and even being unhinged.  While being indifferent to such criticism, they look past the establishment’s hyperbole, rhetoric, chicanery, duplicity, backstabbing, and climate of chasing shadows in its nervous dance to paranoia.

Millennials, reared in a climate of reality television, are living their lives as if it is reality television defining themselves at the age of fourteen, while their parents were still struggling with identity and personality type at the age of thirty or forty. 

While their parents had a problem with authority, with its infallible finality, millennials don’t respect authority but they don’t resent it either.  Authority has no relevance to them.  They are the first generation not interested in rebelling against the status quo, mainly because it has never been a threat to their take on life.  Nor are millennials given to the herd mentality of “true believers” bent on a case or establishing a counterculture.  It would be hard for them to join such a culture when, from their perspective, there is no culture.  They are starting out from scratch.

They are creatures of smartphones, laptops, apps and the Internet, which they see has democratized them and given them access to information that once only belonged to the wealthy.   A lot of what counts as millennial behavior is how rich kids have always behaved.

Consequently, they are not intimidated with position or knowledge power, and therefore can negotiate much better contracts for themselves with traditional institutions. 

This generation thinks before it does, and is usually thinking three or four steps ahead of its interlocutors.  They tell recruiters, “I want to do this, and then when that is done, I want to do this.”    

It is too late for the traditional organization to wield its power in this confusion because they are here and they are earnest and optimistic, pragmatic and idealists, tinkerers more than dreamers, life hackers rather than trendsetters, gender and ethnic neutral seeing the world flat with the mantra, “May the best person win whoever that might be.” 

It is yet to be established if they can lead or follow as they cannot escape some of the hash tags that obsessed their parents such as the need for constant approval. 

Check out their posted photos on the social Internet.  They also fear missing out, cannot stand silence, or being alone, and have to always be doing something. They are celebrity obsessed and have an acronym for everything.  They don’t go to church but believe in God and are likely to be religiously unaffiliated.

In case this is worrisome, they are cool, reserved, not all that passionate, and therefore less prone to manipulation.  They are also pro-business, financially responsible although student loans are more than a $trillion, but household and credit card debt is less than any previous generation. 

In terms of numbers, they are the largest generation in United States history.  Ergo, no recitation of “empowerment” need be voiced as they see themselves as empowered, in charge, comfortable before a camera and able to articulate their case. 

Millennials embrace the future by living in the present, and what they make of it promises to be very different than what they have been programmed by their parents and the society they have to inherit. 

They are not handicapped by the litany of go to school, get good grades, ignore the elevated grading system and social promotion, where colleges and universities depend on defense and industrial contracts for survival, while pretending they do not, spewing out anti-military and anti-industry rhetoric in the classroom, which was bothersome to their parents. 

Nor are millennials troubled with what they have been told is true only to find it is not, such as living in an open, free society of equal opportunity when they see that is not true of people of color, or of women compared to men as has been the case of their parents’ generation.  They plan on making it true, however, for theirs.

They have been inundated with cultural values that don’t resonate.  Self-esteem is claimed to be essential when they see it is great in getting a job or hooking up with someone at a bar, but not so great keeping a job or a relationship.  They are left with the idea that has become close to a cause to distance themselves from anything and everything that suggests “the establishment.”

*     *     *

REFERENCE:

Joel Stein, “THE ME ME ME GENERATION: Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents – Why they’ll save us all!” Time magazine, May 20, 2013, pp. 27-32.

"MATURE ADULT WORKERS!" -- WHERE ARE THEY? A READER COMMENTS

 “MATURE ADULT WORKERS!” -- WHERE ARE THEY?

A READER COMMENTS

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

© October 16, 2014

A READER WRITES:

In your excerpt on “mature adult workers” you did not touch on the fact that the current "deal" is to get rid of workers reaching that terminal age of "62" when they root out more expensive workers with threats, trying to herd them into agreeing to severance plans that only serve the company. 

This has been rampant in hospitals, drug companies, and many more businesses and establishments...blindsiding them, then dispatching them. 

I'll bet you can read between the lines.  Why is this so important to the powers that be to pull the plug on people when they are so close to retirement??? 

Is this much different than companies forcing employees out due to reorganization or redundancy exercises? 

I suppose companies implement such plans to start new hires at lower wages.  Who is there to "trust"?

No longer is it a world where you put in your 25 or 30 years and retire.  Now you are just out on your rear.  This is common knowledge, but I suspect there is some research and statistics on this. 

Be well, and keep up the missives

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Thank you for your interesting comments.  T

This segment that generated your comments is from THE WORKER, ALONE! GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN and relates to "mature adult worker," a worker, I might add, who is practically nonexistent, mainly because he is programmed to have other people (companies) solve his problems, and that is not going to happen anymore.

The book is basically about workers, mainly professional workers, imploring them "to take charge” of their work, and by doing so, take charge of their lives.  

Instead, due to their conditioning, they are more likely to wail about unfairness issues against the company and its management, wondering why these people aren’t doing “the right thing.”  The reason is quite apparent, because they don’t have to.  It is not how the capitalistic system is set up or how it works.  Workers are disposable when management through ignorance, incompetence or malfeasance results in the company not making a profit and going belly up.   Management protects its own quite egregiously.   So, it has been for more than one hundred years.

What you allude to as going on in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, "retiring" people before they reach retirement age or the level of maximum social security benefits, has been going on for years.

In one of my books (WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS) I write about the CEO of K-Mart having a 20-40-60 plan.  This secret policy referred to employees with 20 years of service, making $40,000 or more, and over 60-years-of-age calling for a review of their status to see if they could quietly be removed from employment with K-Mart.

After many years of tolerating this policy Mercer David Grayson, et al led a class action suit against K-Mart, which exposed the whole practice.  The court favored the plaintiffs, but K-Mart counter suited and so this brouhaha has been going on for nigh twenty years (see details on google).

Making $40,000 then was the equivalent of earning $60,000 or more now due to inflation.

No, it is not right, but my book is not about what is right or wrong, but rather an attempt to engage workers to assuming ownership of what they do.  But, alas, they seldom show such inclination in my experience.  When they do, it can bring about monumental results.  Instead, they resort to homicide or sabotage, or as I say in other books, resort to the six silent killers that cost corporations billions of dollars (see Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge, and Corporate Sin: Leaderless Leaders and Dissonant Workers).  

That said once in a while we have breakthrough, which always starts with an individual.

Take Curtis Charles “Curt” Flood, the outstanding St. Louis Cardinal outfielder of Major League Baseball.  In 1969, he was part of a multiple player swap with another major league team, and he refused to go.    

Instead of honoring the player swap, he contacted his attorney, then the Director of the Players Association, Marvin Miller, and sued baseball for violating his collective bargaining rights, which incidentally, at the time were non-existent. 

A single baseball player took on the $multi-billion baseball corporation, and won the right to negotiate his own contract, no longer was he to be chattel of a major league owner.  It threw shock waves through professional sport.  What’s more, he won his case!

Suddenly, all professional athletes could negotiate competitive contracts with baseball owners, indeed, with owners in any professional sport.  It spawn a new profession, professional agents for athletes, and led to athletes becoming mega-millionaires. 

However, it doomed Curt Flood's career.  He died at the age of 59, and had a hard life for "going against the grain." 

Forty-five years later, professional athletes have close to parity while most corporate workers don't.

Corporate society controls the game.  In a modest way, I have been fighting that reality for forty plus years with many books (Work Without Managers, The Worker, Alone, Six Silent Killers, Corporate Sin, Time Out for Sanity, and Who Put You in the Cage?}, along with nearly one thousand articles.

Nothing will change professional workers’ status until workers like Curtis Charles Flood, say, "Hell, no, I won't go!"  And with that action, change the calculus.

In THE WORKER, ALONE, I come down hard on professional workers as well as managers, as these workers represent up to 90 percent of the workforce.

At the turn of the last century (1900), when tool and die makers built automobiles, and there was not yet a General Motors, workers did everything: they planned the work, worked the plan, purchased supplies, set up their own machines, and maintained them, and worked to produce a profitable product.  They had control!  The owner of the shop worked right beside them.  It was similar to the pre-industrial guild.

Corporations were established and gained momentum during WWI, developing a new class of workers called "managers," who became a force in WWII as industrial production of war machines won that war.

By then owners had retired from the workplace, concentrating on selling stock to finance their enterprises with managers running the day-to-day operation.

From 1945 through 1980, the corporation became top heavy with managers with as many as twelve levels of management in a hierarchical pyramid, that was, until Japan, Inc. started to eat the corporate lunch steel, automobiles, appliances, glass, and rubber products.

This development show American industry going from controlling 60 percent of the world manufacturing market after WWII to 30 percent or less today.

Once owners were no longer on the premises, managers became surrogates owners, although only employees, themselves.  They secured their status by appointing CEO friendly Boards of Directors, and came to act as if they were, indeed, the owners.  The minute that mindset set in, it was impossible to move management to engage in reality.

Workers, who during the guild days acted like owners, now acted like renters.  The adversary relationship between labor and management became an undeclared war between workers and managers during the 20^th century, and has spilled over into the 21^st century.  This could have been avoided, but wasn’t. 

At the end of WWII (1945), the American workforce was 90 percent blue-collar with labor unions primed to confront corporate management with demands for wage and fringe benefit concessions for workers.  Unfortunately, for these concessions came with a terrible price.  Workers surrendered control of what they did.

Workers have been powerless ever since, despite the fact that the organization has radically changed from 90 percent blue-collar to nearly 90 percent white collar or professional with blue-collar only a little north of 10 percent.  

No longer in control, workers sued for more and more wage and benefit concessions unable or unwilling to sue for more control of work without making wage and benefit concessions. 

The irony here is that labor unions kept suing for more and more wage and benefit or entitlement programs suing themselves as an entity right out of relevance, and suing workers right out of their jobs.  Today, the automotive industry, which led this charge, is practically on life support from the federal government. 

This has led to a mass corporate exodus of many companies to foreign countries for survival.

Or if workers still had a job, because they weren’t respected or included in the decision-making, they became reactive to management’s demands as if dependent 12-year-old children in 50-year-old bodies, and then they gravitated from this status to becoming counter dependent on the company for their total well being as if the company owed them a living.

I have written most workers are suspended in terminal adolescence in learned helplessness whatever the color of their collar, blue or white.

That dependent mentality survives to this day, although the corporation as an entity is becoming anachronistic and managers increasingly atavistic.

I worked for three major corporations, consulted for several others, but never bought into the corporate culture.  Nor did I ever join the corporate club albeit reaching executive status.  The corporation and its culture has been my laboratory, fodder for my books, and leading to this writing career. 

You didn't ask for this but this gives you a flavor of my mind on the subject.

*     *     *