WONDERING -- THINKING ABOUT THINGS BECAUSE THEY COME TO MIND!

 WONDERING – THINKING ABOUT THINGS BECAUSE THEY COME TO MIND!

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

© October 14, 2014

CONFESSIONS OF AN OCTOGENARIAN

When I was a youngster, then a young man, I found I had many anchors that kept me upright, focused, confident and inspired, feeling I was in tune with Nature, my fellowman, my Irish Roman Catholicism and God.  I was not self-conscious about these things, in fact, I was not consciously aware of them.  I just knew they were there to keep me safe.  That was more than eighty years ago.

By the accident of my birth, I’ve lived through The Great Depression, World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan, the Second Industrial Revolution, the Second Enlightenment or the New Age, The Information Age, and now The Millenniums.

Nature is still nature, my fellowman appears ambivalent, my Catholicism on life support, and God is an outlier or erased from the equation.

Strangely, and some might say perversely, I cling to what is no longer there, or is it that I behave as I do because those original structures burrowed so deep into my bone marrow that I know no other way to behave? 

I am constantly told I am unique, when I don’t feel so, that my interlocutor has never met anyone quite like me, causing me to raise an eyebrow, feeling disconnected from the person, and the comment.  If the person is angry with me, I am asked why I have to be that way. 

The answer is because I know no other way to be.

The cross examination continues: why are you so disciplined?  Why are you so consistently predictable, so robotic?  Then they remember that I have constantly reinvented myself, constantly in the face of authority without blinking, terribly opinionated to the point of arrogance, and yet in the face of these handicaps that I have managed to have an exciting and variable career.  Why is that, I’m asked.  Why do you not want to be like everyone else?

The answers, if one cares to know, are in all my books as I write with that empirical source material about a self that has been pleased to know his God, which has given him the mind and will, and yes, the tolerance to know and accept that self, and to understand that self as no big deal, only the energy and control that those original anchors provided, which was not always constant, which on occasion seemed to have deserted him, which was just enough source material to provide redemption when he would fall off the track allowing him to get back on it and to continue.

My occasional missteps have not been caused by a lack of self-control, self-regard, self-acceptance or self-direction.  My missteps have been a function of sorrow and disappointment seeing persons far more capable than I self-destruct because they have misplaced their moral compass and guidance system.  This has caused me to wonder why.

In a long life, where the world is viewed as an entity and organic whole as much as a person is, I have witnessed that world constantly losing its way, constantly getting caught up in the drama of the times or the latest fads, despite technological breakthroughs and new discoveries, finding too often that these have only led to new obsessions. 

I have concluded that, since life passes as if in an instant, there must be a subconscious drive to stay forever young and stupid, or as the saying goes, “for what else is there to life?”

It is, I suppose, why people are bent on collecting great fortunes believing they can put off death for a little longer, and bask in hedonistic Teflon glory. 

But everyone dies.  God made that the common denominator, everyone!  It is the great equalizer, as everyone gets old and wrinkled, feeble and feckless as a child.  No one can escape the fear of that reality, no one!

When you have a temperament like mine, you read a lot, reflect a lot, and yes, wonder a lot at why we are like we are and how we got that way.

Currently, I’m revising an essay I wrote at university in graduate school (“Search for the Real Parents of My Soul”) for an assignment with little comprehension that it would stay with me.  I took little note of its significance.  I’ve never been a Bible reader, per se, Old or New Testament, other than finding myself being moved by the Epistles read at Catholic Mass from the New Testament.

But for that assignment, I read the Bible, the Torah, the Talmud, and was fascinated imagining the men behind the words as well as the words themselves.  

I’ve never been one to dwell on the words of either the Old or New Testament as literally true, but nonetheless fascinating.  Nor have I ever accepted the literal story of Adam and Eve, although I find it metaphysically significant.

This turn of mind predates my scientific training in chemistry, physics and mathematics, and so it must have something to do with my basic construction or DNA, which brings me to ponder themes that I have always felt but have not been moved to articulate with anything other than passing reference, until now.

ALIENATION AND GOD

One theme is alienation, which means separation, and in the common use of the word, separation from ourselves.  French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) had much to say about alienation, seeing it as a product of the Industrial Revolution and mass production where workers were separated from the final product by doing assembly piece work.

Alienation can also be experienced when a person feels isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved. 

Unemployment may generate a sense of political alienation.  It is why politicians harp on unemployment come election time, and then do nothing about it until the next election cycle.

Alienation has many synonyms: isolation, detachment, estrangement, distance, separation, division; loss or lack of sympathy; estrangement; or public alienation from the bureaucracy.

German philosopher, economist and sociologist Karl Marx (1818-1883) described alienation as a condition of workers in a capitalist economy, resulting from a lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being controlled or exploited.

Psychiatry sees alienation as state of depersonalization or loss of identity in which the self seems unreal, thought to be caused by difficulties in relating to society and the resulting prolonged inhibition of emotion.

In sociology, alienation, a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists, is a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a work or social environment.

In theater, alienation is seen as an effect, sought by some dramatists, whereby the audience remains objective and does not identify with the actors, while in law, alienation represents the transfer of the ownership of property rights.

The word alienation comes from the Latin verb “alienare,” or estrange, and has been with us a long time, a condition that was seeded in the late Renaissance, experienced momentum during The Age of the Enlightenment (17th and 18th century), and gained purchase when Western society moved from its spiritual foundation of being God centered to its secular godless materialism.

This occurred during the burgeoning Industrial Revolution, which was sparked into high gear by the American Civil War, and made palpable by the simple declarative sentence of German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900), “God is dead!” 

Whittaker Chambers writes:

Ages change, politics shift and slither – the conservative spirit does not change.  It adjusts – because it is the summation of human wisdom, and in a sense organic, it looks from the fastness of life, and bends or yields to what is passing, but maintains, as the light shines in darkness, what is everlasting because it partakes of itself.

Were I to have had these words, eloquent as they are, when critics assailed me, I could have described why they found me to be so different.  

The reality is that I have never left my roots, never abandoned those anchors described here, never felt cause to go with the flow and be like everyone else, because I have never felt self-estranged strange as life has often been, imperfect and flawed that I am, because I have never left my belief in God or retreated from that psychic energy that flows from that reality in and through me as spiritual source and connection.

This belief system is based on faith alone, and should I be wrong, should this be all that there is, then God or this Otherness still counts for something as it has given my life purpose and a sense of value.

THE POWERFUL AS POWERLESS IN THE “FASTNESS OF LIFE”

It was no accident that I drifted from a bench chemist to first a student than practitioner of the arts and sciences that dictate organizational development in life.  I must admit that I have never been comfortable in an organization although I feel strongly that our earthly geopolitical system is that, and only that, an organic whole or one organization.

We are all part of a single system with myriad functions and disciplines, characters and cultures, ethnicity and traditions, histories and languages, God fearing and the godless, but all connected to a single fabric which is the human race.

That said, while there is relativism in culture, I think there is a single truth with no ambiguity, and freedom has no conditions other than total freedom, and that freedom is in support of that singular truth.  

The fact that truth and freedom are tainted with the toxicity of human intervention makes this declaration no less relevant or true from my perspective.

Just as no one will ever reach perfection no one will ever experience pristine truth or pristine freedom.  It is the nature of man to be in conflict, first with himself, and invariably with others. 

The key to bridge to this gap is managed conflict, that is, direct confrontation given politely and often when there appears a miscarriage of fairness or justice, or when the rhetoric of authority fails to match the reality in the trenches. 

Not ever being comfortable conforming to an idea or directive that failed to resonate with me, I have been in constant trouble in every organization with which I have been associated, barring none.  Then you ask, how did you continue to survive in such settings?

For one, I made myself a value added commodity that those high in self-interest were willing to tolerate, and for another I was never afraid to lose everything, and start all over again, which I have done.

There is no more powerful or dangerous a person than one of that temperament.  The person cannot be bribed, bullied, shamed or embarrassed into conformity or complicity.

The powerful are powerless in that scenario because their toolbox is a kit of fear, and fear rolls off the back of the fearless.  Morality is never stronger than the reality it speaks for.  

TECHNOLOGY AND GETTING BEYOND THE AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Readers about the globe applaud and question my views, which is my intent.  I have been happy to oblige readers of the benefits of The Age of the Enlightenment, given its emphasis on individualism, freedom and truth, but I have come to question its conceits, its rationalism, central ideas and works.  It has no place for God, and has embraced technology with unfettered lust.

This has advanced secularism, technological dynamism, individualism, capitalism, and the sheer size of intrusive spy-ism.  I have wailed incessantly on this topic, and must now admit that the enervating West will not retreat from this menu.  So prudence dictates that I maneuver within the interstices of these factors rather than howl against them.

Technology is out-of-control multiplying exponentially with such dizzying rapidity that Western cultures, which are already on life support, cannot assimilate technology’s demands, socially, economically, politically, or culturally.

My polemics have been directed against “the Machine Age,” which technology represents, and which I must confess will not disappear.  Yet, survival demands a tremendous adjustment to accommodate technology.

We have been reminded by apologists of technology's many blessings including an increased standards of living, unprecedented abundance of everything, and unrivaled opportunities for individuals, while being quiet about technology’s ability to deal death to millions with a single instrument of war.

Technology has multiplied the needs and hopes of the masses, as it has become the packaging machine to deliver those hopes in multiple products that everyone wants but not necessarily needs.

There is no longer currency in opposing technology, but rather still a need to incorporate it within our moral structure with some mechanisms of change and development to regain our spiritual connection within technology’s domain.

For after two centuries of enormous discoveries and innovations in science and technology, people are socially and morally dislocated and confused.  The evidence is overwhelming in our daily newspapers, television reports and the Internet.

Meanwhile, rather than $billions being devoted to reconnecting people in some degree of harmony and purpose with each other in this technological age, a shocking level of the national budget is devoted to developing war machines and surveillance instrument such as predatory drones, which only lead to increased alienation.

Scientific advances divorced from wisdom have been a factor in this dislocation.  Progress has clearly been separated from the service of the human spirit, which is not only deplorable but devastating, as the human spirit is the engine that drives humanity to purpose and renewal.

You need look nor further for the source of this dislocation than Western priorities.  They are contributors to the decline if not the disintegration of the West.

The remedy could be found in incorporating and integrating the energy and synergy of technology into the fabric of society by developing a new moral framework to relocate civilized people into finding spiritual harmony with each other.

I confess this is new thinking on my part.  I have remained comfortable rejecting technological discoveries pointing out what has been lost for what has been gained.  I am no longer of that mind.  Technology is the reality of our new mass modern existence.

Since the appetites of the masses have been continuously shaped by technology, which has amounted to dehumanizing social psychological and humanistic possibilities by innovating new desires and impulses of the masses severed from the good, why not reverse the trend?  Why not create a new spiritual guidance systems reconnecting the notion of the good with the masses?  Technology can do this if anyone can.

It could be done without technology sacrificing the demand for material abundance by balancing this demand with spiritual fulsomeness. 

The potential for breakthrough, although enormous, would not be quantifiable, first only felt, but once in play, the barriers at every juncture of society would began to crumble and then dramatically disappear. 

We are entering Russian American sociologist Pitrim Sorokin’s (1889-1968) promised six-hundred-year IDEATIONAL culture.  He writes:

We are seemingly between two epochs: the dying SENSATE culture of our magnificent yesterday and the coming IDEATIONAL culture of the creative tomorrow.  We are living and thinking, and acting at the end of a brilliant six-hundred-year-long SENSATE day (Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937).

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