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