FOR YOUR INFORMATION!

About “Time Out for Sanity!”

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

© February 23, 2015

REFERENCE:

This book is in its final editing stages and should be in bookstores and on line by April/May 2015.

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 them. 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, smartphones, laptops, Blackberrys, videophones, PlayStations, Game Boys, MP3’s, iPods, iPads, iPhones, or other mobiles soon available, while 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 made of 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 facility, 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 who believes in nothing 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 the oblivion.

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 an escape, not a rational challenge to the system. You might call it a copping out.  Young men of military draft age, said, “Hell, no, I won’t go” (to Vietnam), and fled to Canada or joined a commune.

The irony is that the current “millennials” haven’t had to be so obstreperous.

Consequently, millennials haven’t had to throw tirades or provoke authority figures. They have simply chosen to ignore 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 consequences. To say they are superficially engaged is a moot point.

Millennials are not into counterculture like the “hippies” of the 1970s. While they mirror each other in tacit disregard to the status quo, millennials are not into the idea of culture, or, indeed, what that might imply. Nor are they into rebellion. They have their electronic pacifiers, and at the moment, they are sufficient to float their boat. The escape today is into some kind of electronics.

It never occurs that these electronic gizmo 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.

Recently, I visited my granddaughter Rachel Carr at the University of Florida who is a pre-med student. Having been a chemistry major in my undergraduate days, I attended a chemistry lecture with some 300 students. The professor was busy down in the pit writing equations talking about geometric covalent bonds while eighteen and nineteen year old students were busy on their smartphones paying him no mind. Attending class appears a concession as they expect to get the essentials on line or in their text sufficient to “ace” the test subsequently to come from the material presented. It is a kind of confidence I don’t remember having during my college days.

Time Out for Sanity! is written in the hopes that it causes the reader to ponder the choices made hoping they 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, April 15, 2015