A CONVERSATION WITH STANLEY REEVES

A CONVERSATION WITH STANLEY REEVES

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

© December 15, 2014

REFERENCE:

This is an excerpt from the AFTERWORD of “The Worker, Alone! Going Against the Grain” (2015) in its second edition for TATE Publishing.  This is a representative segment of the conversation that appears in this book, which is due to be published in early 2015.

Many people have read this book in manuscript form, none more closely than my dear friend, the late octogenarian educator, Stanley Reeves of Clinton, Iowa. For Stanley, work was a labor of love, dedicated to the service of others. He brought his heart and insight to everything he touched to the end of his days.

As school principal, he kept abreast of the changing maturations in education and, as you will see, not always without some skepticism.  That is why I share with you his concerns expressed in a long letter to me after reading this book.

Stanley asks: One might assume that most workers want identity as well as financial reward for their work, but do most workers really want responsibility?

Workers as children shun the demands of responsibility. Such workers are non-responsible as opposed to irresponsible. They do what they are told and little more. Their greatest fear is to be exploited, so they exploit their employer, which is a punishing way of exploiting themselves. But mature adult workers, a breed apart and unhappily in short supply, are motivated by the challenges and demands of responsibility. It is the way they compute value and measure themselves.

Stanley sees contradiction in my suggestion that the HYPE (Harvard, Yale and Princeton Elitism) formula is not working. He agrees that Ivy League power brokers mainly represent the pomp and circumstance of the Establishment, the divine rights of insiders, and that HYPE has little motivation to modify the status quo, or to deal with society’s sick soul. Therefore, he takes me to task for my failure to place our eroding society on HYPE, choosing instead to place it on the backs of workers, themselves. Why?

HYPE is far less important, far less crucial to society’s redemption than HYPE, itself, would prefer to believe. HYPE is actually an aberration created by a passive society immersed in denial.

Obviously, HYPE has no real motivation to change conditions to a more optimum system, especially when it might prove threatening to its power. Why should it? As matters now stand, HYPE reaps the benefits of passivity. A disenfranchised workforce and indifferent citizenry denies itself the power it actually possesses.

Were workers to take charge of their destiny, the identity and recognition they so passionately desire would follow.  Modernity, or the processes of modern industrialism, has left workers running on empty. Materialistic society finds the glass half empty, not half full. Materialism’s emphasis on consumption at the expense of spiritual nourishment has depersonalized relationships and crushed workers under the burden of a corpulent bureaucracy.

The predicted “death of God,” or the “disenchantment of the world,” however, has not taken shape. The hunger remains for balance between secular and spiritual needs. Only workers, themselves, can restore this balance.

Over his long career in education, Stanley has seen the repeated quest for the perfect formula in education. Each panacea has run its course only to be replaced by a new contender. It intrigues him that I should see “information technology” as essentially a new panacea, an excuse to avoid our problems. He writes, “I found your concept especially interesting as all too often a professor writes a book and we all jump on his bandwagon. A few years later, we jump ship and adopt a new program. This ‘new program’ is not new at all, probably one that was dumped not that long ago.”

I confessed to Stanley that I am not anti-science. Nor am I pro-technology for technology’s sake. I am simply not awed by power brokers leveraging the newly discovered to fill their coffers.  My point here is that technology is not bad in itself, but that its promoters often use it as a ruse to gain control and influence, as well as economic advantage. Little thought is given to its long term impact on society. Science is the pursuit of knowledge, technology the pursuit of power. Technology, as wondrous as it is, cannot replace the spiritual needs of humanity. Man does not live by bread alone.

Stanley writes: “The segment on Silent Invasions is so true, but sadly we seldom think about the fact that our lives are invaded from every direction...government, TV, surveillance, noise of every kind.  I love your expression, ‘Love is the sinew missing from the muscle of today’s organization… love of work, life, friendship, and being. Lust, greed and pleasure are the void fillers for those afraid of love.’ This is sad but true.”

We are culturally conditioned from birth, programmed to value, believe and behave in a prescribed manner, a manner dictated by society. Conditioning is a powerful force with which few of us stop to wonder. It has enormous impact on our lives.

Generations subjected to a particular style of cultural inculcation establish behavioral patterns, patterns which stubbornly refuse to desist when they are no longer appropriate.  Why are there no Catholic priests who are women? Why no American popes? Why has the United States never had a woman as president? Alas, we have an African American president, who was not only elected in 2008, but also re-elected in 2012. Still, why so few great female philosophers? Why has work gotten a bad name?

Stanley’s conditioning was revealed when he took exception to my claim that “no matter where public confession is exhibited, it is suspect.” He sees the gross display of private lives on day-time television considerably more offensive than public confession in esteemed disclosure groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. I see them as both the same. They both rape the soul. He asks, “Why do you feel that way?”

When I was young, I thought electric shock therapy was barbaric; that frontal lobotomy surgery was uncivilized for the treating of the mentally ill. Yet, it was accepted as good, and I was told I was too young to understand otherwise. Earlier in our history, bloodletting was a prescribed medical procedure. It often hastened the departure of many souls from this life. To have suggested it was barbaric, then, would have met with a similar rebuke.

The sanctity of the human spirit is the last bastion of civilized existence. Too frequently, workers go along with violation of this sanctity for a “good,” which they are told is greater than the evil it causes. So, they are silent. Their good sense is buried in a shallow grave, giving the benefit of the doubt to those deemed “wiser,” but who are actually less attuned to the human spirit.  When we abuse our sanctity, it demeans the very nature of being human. There is nobility in private suffering, little grace in public confession.

In the chapter on “The Price of Innocence,” Stanley asks: Are you saying that as empowerment comes from within rather than from things, we tend not only to accept giving up much control but to demand it?

What is intriguing about this question is that Stanley found the buzz word “empowerment” disturbing. It has thrown him off course. That is the intention of buzz words, to cloud the issue, cover-up the complexities, and let whatever inference is made be unchallenged. It keeps the dialogue going, nothing changes, and Madison Avenue has another marketing coup.

You are correct, empowerment does not come from “things.”  It comes from within. Power can only be given. Once given, it is nigh impossible to get it back. The current buzz word, “empowerment,” is therefore totally misleading. Literature is replete with the issue of empowerment, as if this were a secret weapon from the Oracle of Delphi. Not so.

Management cannot “empower” workers. Only workers can empower themselves by grasping and using their own power. The only way one human being can have power over another human being is by one giving up power to the other.

“Empowerment” is one of those non-word words which periodically floats to the surface, like an oil slick, to pollute the cerebral cortex. No one can have power over another unless that person forfeits his power.  Democracy supports the myth that workers control their lives, when in fact they don’t. People of influence flatter workers into giving up their power on a voluntary basis. This creates dependency and suspends workers in adolescence. Power, or control of workers’ destiny is thus sacrificed for the promise of comfort, safety, security and harmony. Another word for “power” is freedom, and it is clear in these times of ubiquitous terrorists in the shadows of our lives that many are willing to sacrifice such freedom for the assurance of security and stability.

In totalitarian states, the same is done but on a more coercive scale. Far less consideration is given the mechanism of persuasion, which would have workers believe they control their destiny. Granted, there is a conspicuous difference in the ambience of these two political persuasions, while worker behavior is remarkably similar.

The similarity is demonstrated worldwide. In theory, if power is given up voluntarily, cooperation follows. If it is obtained through coercion, compliance follows. What behavior dominates the workplace worldwide? The evidence suggests that compliance prevails, which is cleverly masked to give the appearance of genuine cooperation.

Workers and managers everywhere proclaim they promote cooperation when, in fact, it is compliance. “Empowerment” remains a fictive machination which nobody buys, but everyone sells.

Technocrats feel they can bend and twist workers into the configurations desired that support the interests of technology.  Empowerment is but one stratagem. Across the globe, sophisticated empowerment programs support technocratic objectives.

They are not working. They cannot work. The stratagem is designed to fail because it plays recklessly with the worker’s spirit, as if that spirit were a microchip. It isn’t. Workers gave up much of their power early in the 20th century for the currency of comfort and security on the job. It created the working middle class. Up to The Great Depression of 1929, the “Robber Barons” of Rockefeller, Carnegie and Mellon, among others, took more and more away from workers until they were little more than working slaves.

The Union Movement came to the fore, and fought hard for workers all through the 1930s, and gained compensation and entitlement concessions, but alas, at the expense of control of work. It had been a difficult transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society, and it is proving equally difficult going from and industrial society to an information society.

Farm workers were first chased into factories by the shift to an industrial society, and then regimented to time cards and imprisoned in windowless barricades called “factories.” Not only did these farm workers surrender tractors and plows, but the freedom and control of what they did. As farmers, there was commitment to self-interests.

Now, their lives were committed to a new breed, management. Workers lost more than power. They misplaced their souls.  Their identity, dignity and purpose, once taken for granted, was now stranger to them.  Seventy-five years of cumulative cultural shock has made workers passive participants to their own destiny. They are wards of “the system,” no longer independent contractors. They can smell the fields as they drive to work, only to have the aroma killed by the stench of machine oil or the static hum of computers. 

With a casual flair, management talks about “giving power back to workers” by “empowering them.” This flippancy is like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube. Meanwhile, management itself has outlived its function and is disappearing from the workplace in droves. The Human Resources movement and its “scientific management” is obsolete. The worker is truly alone.

Stanley asks: How can we convince workers that in a number of areas we are no longer the best, when the government and media insist that we are?  This is not a problem of the government or media. Both are responsive, not creative organs of society. Workers give both of them far more credit than they deserve. The problem is the refusal of workers to embrace reality while they still have a choice. It appears they would rather deny despair, and surrender to a corrosive fatalism. Not until despair takes hold, and forces workers to attention will workers appreciate the fact that they are truly alone. Not until they hit bottom are they likely to challenge popular myths.

Maturity is a function of reality. Cognizance of reality ensures survival. When survival has multiple buffers, which make denial an alluring retreat, a sense of jeopardy is not experienced. Workers today live in a climate of denial, in the lap of luxury. They are only miserable, not yet despairing. They have little sense of danger, only inconvenience. The “other shoe” has not yet hit the pavement. 

Stanley asks: Is it the amount of production or quality which deserves more of our attention? 

It is heresy to suggest that these are not relevant considerations.  Increased production means more jobs. Better quality means a more stable market share. Still, production and quality camouflage the issue.  These are outcomes or effects, not causes. What is ignored, and what I feel needs more consideration, is the necessity for workers to develop more orderly minds, like the minds they once had when they worked on the land from sun up to sun down, and loved it. Their minds were in balance with a sense of equilibrium.

Workers today are underemployed because they are underwhelmed and underdeveloped. Tap this collective mind and the question of productivity and quality will be moot.  Workers are capable of incredible achievement if moved by their interests, or what they want to do. Focusing on production and/or quality exclusively are outcomes or things they have to do. Givens. Good quality and increased production are effects, not causes. The fusion of work is in the nuclear structure of the spirit of the workforce. Quality and production are the results of a spirited workforce built on trust with full utilization of its collective energies.

Stanley asks: Why isn’t technology doing what we hoped it would do for education? Are our goals wrong, our methods, or is it something else?

Technology cannot create spirit. It can kill spirit, and often does by the sheer magnitude of its conceit in minimizing the human factor. Spirit is the central core of work. Without it, work resembles a collection of mules turning a wheel and going nowhere.

Technology has limitation the same as everything else. In the end, the more technology seeks an answer to the mystery of the human spirit, the more it appears entangled in its own confusion.

Education is a spiritual adventure which is anchored in an intellectual experience. It is not a “thing,” but a process. The process is one of discovery. The human mind is seemingly limitless in its capacity for insight and foolishness. Tools, such as the computer, may assist in discovery as long as they remain tools and not as ends in themselves. Then they become toys, which is alright, too, as long as the distinction is clear. Where technology seems to be headed, at this moment, is as another ornament on the tree of knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.

What I see lacking in education is a philosophy of education. What appears instead is the expediency of design — a “new curriculum” for every contingency that surfaces. For me, the aim of education is to prepare the student first, to think, to become an able problem-solver within the context of life experience; second, the dual function to increase an awareness of the nobility of man’s achievements, and an appreciation of the fragile beauty of nature; and finally, to make prudent choices in the student’s best interest, which ultimately would prove beneficial to society.

This combination enhances the student’s grasp of reality and maintains his hold on his spiritual legacy. The combination also heightens his capacity to love and to give of himself, which makes him more human.  Education is not preparation for a job. That should come later when the student chooses a profession, craft or vocation. All the technical skill in the world, without this spiritual-intellectual foundation, leaves little satisfaction. Life is meant to be lived, experienced, and enjoyed to fulfillment. Pain, risk, discomfort, embarrassment, confusion, doubt and failure are but country roads taken to arrive at that destiny.

Stanley asks: You speak of the control that polling has over our government as well as ourselves. What can be done?

In other books, I write that the “please other” mentality is damaging to the soul. Such a mentality is too easily swayed to follow the Pied Piper of Polls.  When the focus is on other people’s expectations for us (on their agenda), there is little appreciation of what gives us satisfaction. Life is a constant battle to please, in which case the spirit always loses: “You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t!”

Only by first “pleasing self ” may the spirit soar and behavior be guided by what we personally think, believe, expect and value, not because we are instructed to be so inclined, but because we have discovered it to be so.  It is further suggested that selflessness is a guise which wins societal approval, but which hides a hidden agenda. It is the guise of the victim, of the person who swims in the ocean of self-pity and never touches the shore.

On the other hand, the truly selfish person, who first understands and satisfies his basic needs, is more in a position to be generous and genuine. He is whole. Such a person values people who have an opinion, a stable of beliefs and a value system which supports choices.

What a person thinks is of more value to him than what voices of wisdom would have him think. He bases his behavior on firsthand experience, not second or third hand information. He takes success and failure in stride. He judges others on the basis of what he experiences in his relationship to them. Celebrity, which the “please other” mentality spawns, is of no consequence to him.  Therefore, polls are irrelevant.  He has a point of view, a philosophy of life, an approach to problem-solving. The choices he makes are his choices. He is a rare breed. 

So much of identity and recognition is tied to belonging.  Pollsters exploit this tendency. Many find comfort in thinking like the pollster’s sample. One day it will dawn on those so inclined that the only person they can please is themselves. Advancing that agenda is bound to displease others. No one can have it both ways. Meanwhile, society is gridlocked in a nervous dance to be all things to all people. Polling is symptomatic of this mania.

Stanley asks: Where are students going to learn the difference between rights and privileges, since all too many parents have abdicated this responsibility? Many parents don’t want schools to become involved in teaching values. So where does that leave us?

Forgive a personal aside. My teenage daughter once enjoyed the largest bedroom in our home, complete with her own television, personal telephone number, stereo, bathroom, as well as generous access to a family automobile. I say “once,” because she treated these privileges as rights.

Over time, as her behavior deteriorated, she was not grounded, but these privileges were reduced. First, she lost her large bedroom with adjoining bath. She had to find a place for most of her things in the attic as the new bedroom was quite small. In time her bedroom looked like a convent cell, with no phone, sparsely furnished. Plus, she no longer had the use of an automobile.

After a few months, as her behavior improved, these privileges were gradually restored, eventually she was even given the title to her own automobile. Since this experience, her behavior has been exemplary. She now knows the difference between “rights” and “privileges.” School, which was once a drag, is suddenly important to her. She is now a college graduate and a successful professional in her chosen field. And she has done it all on her own. No one else can take credit for her turnaround.