THUGGERY IS COLOR BLIND

Baltimore, Maryland Riots – April 2015

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

© April 30, 2015

“Black America’s ancestors would be ashamed of how we’re conducting ourselves,” says ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, an African American, in light of the riots in Baltimore this past week.

A READER WRITES:

About all these riots I find it interesting that Al Sharpton immediately showed up in Ferguson and North Charleston where white people were in charge, but he did not show up in Baltimore that has had black officials for 40 years as far as I know. 

I find that blacks as a group blame everybody except themselves for their situation.  Until blacks accept that the over 70% illegitimate birthrate are their creation, that the lack of education is their creation, and that they use racism as an excuse. 

Jews realize that anti-Semitism has existed for centuries, but they still have succeeded in many walks of life across the world.

Like your family where no one had gone to college, of the four children in my family three of us earned college degrees.    

When I went into teaching after I got out of the U.S. Air Force, I started as an English teacher because I had a bachelor’s degree in English. 

While I was teaching, I used the GI bill to work on an MA in art education and an MFA in painting and art history; all of which took until 1976 to complete. 

In 1970, the schools were integrated and I was sent to Young Junior High to teach English.  We had a faculty that was 50% black and a student body that was primarily black, and about 30 students in each class. 

During that first year, we had only 100 white students, all the teachers up to then had been black.  I quickly learned that most of my students, none of whom where white, could not read at grade school level and were therefore severely handicapped.    

The school hired an education PhD from the University of South Florida whose solution to the low reading level was to have each student in the class tell the teacher a story.  

The teacher was supposed to write down the student’s words as the story was being told, and then the student would read the story back to the class.

That brilliant solution never told you what to do with the other 29 students most of whom were in the same boat as the student telling his or her story.

At one point in my two years there, I had a black female student intern.  At some point an intern is supposed to assume the classroom without the teacher’s presence.

When I came back at the end of the class, she was in tears because the kids had behaved so badly during my absence.  

The fact that she was black made no difference.  Before integration, all teachers in this school were black which clearly made no difference. 

My daughter who lives in Washington, D.C. knows someone who started substituting in the District of Columbia school district.  His first job was in a first grade composition class of some 18 students of whom 16 were Hispanic and two black. 

He told my daughter that the two black student behaved badly during the whole day. 

Teachers, no matter who they are, cannot teach anyone who does not want to learn.  It matters not what race they are.

It is time the black communities and their leadership start to acknowledge the issues and make an effort to resolve them instead of blaming every problem on racism.

Concerned

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Dear Concerned,

Coming from a family in which no one had previously graduating from college, three of the four of us siblings graduated from university.  

I am older than you, a Great Depression kids, while you came as a preteen from Europe, having to learn the language, the customs, the culture and the adapt to the competition for getting ahead.  

You were however white and came from a country and culture that had not experienced the history of slavery of the United States.  

We are 150 years (2015) from the shame of slavery yet its shadow is deep and pervasive in our culture. Neither the white or black leadership has ever chosen to deal systemically with this social injustice and that extends to our current African American President of the United States.  

Years ago, when I taught at several universities as an adjunct professor, I had an African American student in my graduate program. 

She, too, majored in English literature and was asked to teach the classics to senior students in this particular school.  I mention her in this context because she had experiences similar to yours only all of her students were white.

It was an ethnic school district which prided itself in its “old country values” and European heritage.  Unfortunately, many of her students were thugs, outright unequivocal thugs, no question.

During a discussion one day, she confessed to her graduate seminar colleagues – we were studying conflict management from a social psychological perspective -- that every day was a matter of physical as well as emotional survival.

In particular, her male students were rowdy, abusive and disrespectful.  They had no interest in learning the subject matter, and made it clear they would prefer to be elsewhere.  

“I was so traumatized at the end of the day that I was unable to drive myself home, which was thirty miles away, until I got my wits back under control.”

Pretty, tiny almost diminutive, a person standing barely five feet in height, she was disrupted from her discourse when someone shouted, "drama queen!"  The class erupted in laughter.  I did not.     

The comment came from a cocky white guy who clearly resented her, as she was the only black person in the class and plainly the best student.

At the point of tears, another student asked, “Why didn’t you go to the principal and report the conduct?”

She looked at him in disbelief, and turned to exit the class.  

I encouraged her to stay.  It was then that she said, “I did go to the principal when one of the biggest boys in the class picked me up, held me over his head, and threatened to throw me out the second story window.”

“What did the principal say about that?”

He said, “You’re standing here, young lady, right before my eyes with not a scratch on you, am I right?”

“You’re exaggerating,” the skeptic retorted.  With that she picked up her books and left.

*     *     *

Author Joseph Wambaugh, former sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department, states in one of his novels that a community gets the police it deserves. 

I have found this institutionally consistent with other disciplines and other cultural settings from education to industry, from the religious to the sports world, from high tech to low tech, from parenting to the teaching profession.  

Each gets the character and consistency of a sane or insane relational setting.

Stephen A. Smith, a black man who has risen to prominence from the New York City ghetto, is a black man who is not afraid to call it like he sees it.  

This is what he said on ESPN’s “First Take” after the City of Baltimore plunged into chaos on Monday (April 27, 2015) as rioters took to the streets on the same day as the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died of a serious spine injury while in police custody:

“Our black America’s ancestors,” he proclaimed, “would be ashamed of how we’re conducting ourselves.  

"Something needs to be said,” he continued.  “We talk about police brutality. We need to understand the difference between police brutality and a brutal act by a particular police officer. 

"When you say ‘police brutality,’ what you’re doing is inciting a nation of individuals out there to go and act in a very belligerent and, dare I say, criminal fashion against law enforcement officials. And where does that get them?”

Specifically addressing the rioting and looting in Baltimore, Smith said he found it “disgusting” to see people actually supporting “those kinds of actions.”

Further, one of the biggest problems in the black community, he said, is “that we’re not looking inward.”

“We’re busy looking outside at everybody else; what everyone else has done to us; what history has done to us; how it has affected us,” he added. 

“I’m here to tell you something…our ancestors, considering our history and what they had to go through and the sacrifices that they had to make to get us to this point, our ancestors would be ashamed of how we’re conducting ourselves.”

He continued: “And it needs to be said, and it needs to be addressed and it needs to be stopped. Because I see a whole bunch of young brothers and sisters out here right now. They’re here with us. They wouldn’t act that way.”

Smith also said the rioters in Baltimore need to be treated like “criminals” and handled accordingly because there are black people suffering because of their actions.

Unfortunately, Smith is a sports celebrity and not a government insider such as the mayor of Baltimore, who appeared very much like that high school principal mentioned above, until that didn’t wash too well with the public.

Dialogue is a beginning and useful when it is expressed openly and honestly and forthrightly, not in hyperbole, but based on one's experience as you have indicated here.  

Your words and those of Stephen A. Smith echo the sentiments of persons who care, and caring is the conduit to tolerance and understanding.  

*     *     *

Excerpt: THE WORKER, ALONE! Going Against the Grain!

Toys of the Mind?

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

© April 29, 2015

REFERENCE:

Excerpt from The Worker, Alone! Going Against the Grain (2015, expanded Second Edition of 1995 original).

THE CHALLENGE OF LEARNING!

Workers in my experience have inert minds, minds on automatic pilot. They learn by rote, or from a particular person, curriculum, or doctrine; from an exceptional teacher, coach or preacher, or from specific books. They fail, in the main, to learn from their own observations and actions; from their own unique set of life experiences.

The result is that many workers imitate the experience of others. They strive for identity and recognition through conformity, competition and copycatting.

They seem unwilling to struggle for identity. The only way true identity and recognition can be achieved is through self-discovery and experience, not by imitating the styles and behaviors of others.

The tremendous burden of attempting to always please others, both personally and professionally, and then to live up to their expectations, has made many workers’ minds extraordinarily dull.

After decades of turbulent discord within themselves, festering conflict with others, tiring accommodation, punishing doubt, plus the constant agony of imitation, many workers feel cut off from life, adrift and without anchor.

Through this maddening process of attempting to be like everyone else, many have become second or third-hand persons to themselves. They are always quoting somebody else, never mustering the courage to consider or voice an original thought or opinion. They check pollsters, as if heuristic box scores, to see if they are “thinking right,” terrified at the thought they might be outside the prevailing norm. Their consumer choices, dictated by a cadre of experts, compel them to support the “best” films, books, automobiles, neighborhoods, cities, diets, mates, exercises, stocks, ad infinitum. Taste is designed by a committee with the lowest common denominator in mind.

When workers are disappointed, they can blame the experts in which they placed their confidence, for the choices were never their own. This brings to the surface an elusive problem.

If the choices made are not considered the worker’s, it is not in the cards for them to learn from their mistakes. Instead, like the terminally immature, they can claim no responsibility for their behavior.  They were just doing what they were told. 

Identity and recognition thus become disingenuous, while their actions become clones of someone else’s agenda. Rented minds never act like home owners.

Alas, I suspect such minds pervade the climate of the home, job, school and community. A poverty of will and a concession to helplessness defines the identity of many such workers.

Life’s hard rule is that everyone is responsible for their own actions, and to learn from the consequences of those actions.  Everyone gets a report card on their performance every day of their life.

Workers can be male, female, dark or light, tall or short, fat or trim, young or old, American or Armenian, Indian or Indonesian, life’s flow is the same. Movement is similar. Every worker’s destiny, whatever it is, depends on observations in school, work, and play and in daily pursuits.

Discipline is not conformity. Discipline involves a mind alert to its own actions — a living mind. Conformity implies conflict between “what is” and “what should be.” Conforming to certain prevailing ideologies, social norms and societal “truths,” truths to which everyone supposedly subscribes without reflection, seeds conflict.

A discriminating mind cannot absorb what makes little sense. Such a mind must probe and weigh the merits of what is professed against what is experienced. With conflict, there is always friction and the dissipation of energy. Workers can be so absorbed in the conflict that they are not conscious of reality. The result is then confusion.

Each worker must put his own house in order, because no one else is going to do it for him.  A mind in disorder peers out at the world through an opaque window, unable to see the beauty and balance of nature. The window holds confusion in and beauty and the delight of other people out.

Most workers within my experience are consumed with the distractions of either toys or careers. For them, life is without beauty or order. It is a constant grind, day in and day out. “I work hard and play hard,” they proclaim, failing to realize the implicit absurdity in this boast. They have learned the art of moral evasion.

Yet beauty, not wealth or security, is a delight and it is free!

The spirit withdrawn into itself and out of sight, may not be completely destroyed, but it could go blind in that pervasive internal darkness.

What is valued is not always what is precious. As Shakespeare puts it: “To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmaster’s.” Indeed!

A paternalistic society knows the value of toys, but not necessarily the essence of beauty. Give a child having a tantrum a complicated toy, and the child is absorbed, distracted from its anguish, quiet.  The child enjoys the mechanics of discovery and is focused, involved completely with the toy. All mischief dissolves.

Such a society gives workers the toys of technology, the toys of ideals and the toys of beliefs to absorb their discontent. Some toys are treated as sacred (religious doctrines, rites and rituals), others as profane (pop culture), still others as precedence (national holidays).

Tradition as toy assures the maintenance of the company pecking order. No one disputes the CEO.’s omnipotence. Other toys are status symbols: money, stately homes, expensive automobiles, socio-economic status, knowledge…

Workers come to venerate ideals, beliefs, policies, customs, norms and hierarchical relationships without reflection. “It is the way it has always been, so it must be right.” These come to be accepted as “truths,” to which the majority subscribe, when they are simply “toys of the mind.”

They are all inventions of thought and therefore flawed. Even so, some treat them as absolute truths, when there are no such things. There are no absolute truths, only a welter of contradictory truths embodied in the worker’s imaginary self. This imaginary self is likely to form his “character.” And character is but a mixed bag of relative truths which each worker may call his own.

Psychic toys are proliferating at an alarming rate. Still, they are seldom essential, more apt to be vain accumulations of gibberish and nonsense.  The potpourri of psychic toys a society is reluctant to “let go of” doesn’t make them less real, but it does make them more sacrosanct.

Psychic toys are now increasingly in the way. But workers have yet to develop a sense of humor about these toys, especially when they are no longer appropriate. 

Take smartphones for example; better yet take them away from young people and see the reaction.  These magic tools/toys have become gods to them.  So, to take them away is tantamount to messing with their religion.

Legitimate tools as toys have their purpose, and that purpose is mostly as distraction.  When workers are absorbed in toys, like a child, they are extraordinarily quiet and obedient to the demands of these toys.   

The toys may be concepts, special interests, or “things,” such as smartphones, cell phones, laptops, computers, technologies, automobiles, boats, houses, planes, athletics, hobbies, the worker’s own persona or profession.

Stated another way, when legitimate tools become obsessional recreational diversions, they cease being instrumentally valuable and become terminal values competing with love, duty, devotion, and intimacy; in other words, toys, or escape from reality.

Wealth or ambition are also toys of the mind when they are viewed exclusively in a miser’s sense, and not in an other-directed sense or what they can do for others. The list of toys of the mind is endless, but the results are always the same. The toys absorb and distract the worker from the chaos of “what is,” to the appeasing pleasure of denial and selective forgetting.

With effective distraction, there is the absence of self. There is no need to think, experience, problem solve or learn. For the moment, the worker is totally controllable. He differs little with the greyhound at the race track who chases the mechanical rabbit, or the rodent who wanders through the maze for the promised piece of cheese. The Holy Grail of this anxious age is the perfect toy to seduce the worker’s restless spirit into compliant behavior.

Should the reader think this is a recent challenge, Roman philosopher Seneca (4 B.C. - 65 A.D.) observed: “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.” That is not likely with the constant subliminal bombardment of toys of distractions.

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!

See Bill, See Bill Run, Run Bill Run!

See Hillary, See Hillary Run, Run Hillary Run!

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

© April 29, 2015

FERGUSON, MISSOURI

A series of protests and civil disorder began the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri.  Brown, a young African American, unarmed, was shot and killed by a white police officer when involved in an altercation with the officer.

The unrest followed with the typical scenario of looting, burning, and destroying the very neighborhood that mainly black Americans occupied at or below the poverty level.

Again, and typically, this sparked a vigorous debate in the United States about the relationship between law enforcement officers and African Americans, the militarization of the police, and a doctrine of force in Missouri with the mobilization of police and the Missouri National Guard.

Ferguson, Missouri is a small community outside of St. Louis with those in charge of municipal government mainly white.

As the details of the original shooting event emerged from investigators, police established curfews and deployed riot squads to maintain order. Along with peaceful protests, there was looting and violent unrest in the vicinity of the original shooting. The unrest continued on November 24, 2014, after a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer who shot Michael Brown.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Baltimore erupted in violence on Monday, April 27, 2015 as hundreds of rioters looted stores, burned buildings and injured at least 15 police officers following the funeral of a 25-year-old black man who died after he was injured in police custody.

Freddie Gray, an African American, made eye contact with a white police officer and then ran away.  He was pursued, arrested, handcuffed, and placed in a police cruiser.  On the way to jail, somehow his spine was broken, four days later he died.

Riots broke out just a few blocks from his funeral, they then spread through much of West Baltimore in the most violent U.S. demonstrations since arson and shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.

A large fire consumed a senior center under construction near a church in East Baltimore on Wednesday night.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard as firefighters battled blazes set by looters. Police have made more than 250 arrests and Baltimore schools are closed as this is being written.  The Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball Team canceled its Tuesday and Wednesday baseball game with the Chicago White Sox, and is forced to play its next home games (Friday thru Sunday) in Tampa, Florida where the Tampa Bay Rays will hit the field as the visiting team on their own home turf.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who is African American, called the rioters "thugs" and imposed a citywide curfew for adults beginning Tuesday night, with exceptions for work and medical emergencies.

Again, typically, Gray's death on April 19 reignited a public outcry over police treatment of African Americans that flared last year after the killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, New York City and elsewhere.

Police in Baltimore on Monday used pepper spray on rioters who had sacked check-cashing and liquor stores. Looting spread to a nearby shopping mall and rioters smashed car windows and torched cars outside a major hotel.

Rioters twice slashed a fire hose while firefighters fought a blaze in the afternoon at a CVS pharmacy that had been looted before it was set on fire.

In addition to the Orioles baseball games being canceled, schools, businesses and train stations have been shut down in the city of 662,000 people 40 miles from the nation's capital of Washington, D.C.

"All this had to happen, people getting tired of the police killing the young black guys for no reason. ... It is a sad day but it had to happen," said Tony Luster, 40, who is on disability and was out on the street watching the police line.

A string of deadly confrontations between mostly white police and black men, and the violence it has prompted, will be among the challenges facing U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the first female in that office, who was sworn in on Monday.  She is also African American, as is the Baltimore mayor, Baltimore police chief, Baltimore fire chief, and the majority on the Baltimore city council. 

When poverty, repression, suppression, benign neglect, unemployment, teenage grade and high school drop outs become endemic to a place and space, you can be assured of one thing: the rhetoric will be the same. 

Following her swearing in, Attorney General Lynch condemned the "senseless acts of violence" and signaled that improving relations between the police and the communities they protect will be high on her agenda.  Later, while scenes of riots were broadcast on television, she briefed President Barack Obama, who in turn provided a rhetorical response to the tragedy.  Nothing changes.

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE

Hillary Rodham Clinton, formerly Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, is running for President of the United States.  She and her husband, Bill Clinton, former President of the United States, have had controversy follow them since they were ensconced in public life in the State of Arkansas, where Bill Clinton was governor. 

While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, her husband had eleven of his thirteen speaking engagement, eight for at least $500,000, one for $600, 000 (Netherlands), one for $550,000 (China), one for $750,000 (Hong Kong) and two for $700,000 for the poor African nation of Nigeria.  This represents a grand total of $7.3 million between 2003 and 2012. 

Political consultant Peter Schweitzer has a new book out tracking the Bill and Hillary run.  It is called appropriately, Clinton Cash (2015).

The single Hong Kong speaking fee represents a ten year income for a working professional with a college education.  It represents a thirty year income for a Walmart employee and more than the lifetime income of many of those school dropouts in this story. 

AND WITH THIS DICHOTOMY, TOO!

Between 600,000 and 1,000,000 new books are published each year.  Yet, according to a Huffington Post Survey, 40 percent or 128 million Americans do not read a book a year; most Millennials don’t read newspapers getting most of their information on-line or the Internet. 

Few Europeans, and even fewer Asians admit to reading American writers outside of technology.  They claim most American writers are intellectually vapid.  No problem!  Entered into this placid oasis is the e-book industry with Amazon and others producing electronic books that may one day vie in numbers with the national debt.

Meanwhile, 14 percent of some 44 million Americans have such poor or non-existing reading skills that they could not read: See Bill, See Bill Run, Run Bill Run!  See Hillary, See Hillary Run, Run Hillary Run!

*     *     *

 

SOJOURN OF AN INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC

SOJOUR OF AN INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC

Kenneth L. Murrell, Ph.D.

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

© April 24, 2015

Kenneth L. Murrell is presently on the faculty of Management at The University of West Florida in Pensacola, Florida and president of Empowerment Leadership Systems.

Ken is co-author of Empowerment in Organizations: How to Spark Exceptional Performance and has written over eighty articles, technical papers, chapters, book reviews and research reports. 

In addition, he is developing new programs using the Action Empowerment model he created. "The Organization" simulation is being used in several universities and as a management training tool.

For many years Dr. Murrell devoted his time and attention to working and traveling in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and South America. 

His most recent U.N. work took him to the Republic of Slovenia and Somalia, East Africa as senior associate and founder of the consulting firm Development Management Associates.

Institute Associates

• East U.S.
• Midwest U.S.
• South and Southwest U.S.
• West U.S.
• Africa, North Africa, and Middle East
• Asia
• Canada
• Europe
• Caribbean, Central and South America
• Oceania
• Honorary Associates

This is offered as an introduction to my readers across the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South East and North East Asia to this academic.

I became acquainted with Dr. Murrell in 1991 after he read Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches (1991), and invited me to speak to his students at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. 

We have kept in touch over the years but only occasionally given his busy teaching and international consulting schedule.  He seemingly is intrigued with my “Jesus Story” as I share it with my readers as I write Search for the Real Parents of My Soul.   

Dr. Murrell, like myself, had an extensive industrial executive career before becoming an academic in the discipline of industrial-social-organizational psychology.  It is for that reason I share his recent e-mail with you.

A READER WRITES:

Jim,

Thank you so much for sharing this (re: The Beauty of Open Exchange:

The “Jesus Story” Unfolds, April 18, 2015). 

I am completing a couple of weeks teaching my German MBA's.  While here in Mannheim, I was able to travel for the first time to Poland. 

This is my 70th country to visit and I do wish I had made a point of getting there years ago.

What has made this trip even more special is being able to follow your conversation about Jesus.  

While in both Warsaw and Krakow, I was able to tour the Jewish museums and old city areas in both cities.   These were great places to learn about the history of both Judaism and Christianity. 

As you may recall, I once lived in Cairo and was able to visit that area’s sacred places as well as Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and those places that are now central to your recreation of the “Jesus Story.”

Likewise, the same is true for Europe with many landmarks left by early Christian missionaries as they worked to convert that Gentile world.

Before working in Germany, I spent two weeks in China and Inner Mongolia where the Buddhist traditions are still quite obvious.

I am off tomorrow back to the states and expect to be able to read even more of your missives on the plane. 

So once again, thanks for creating such nutritious conversations.

Ken

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Ken,

Thanks for your response.  You are a busy guy.  Stay well.

Jim

A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE

World before “Me” Generation, “X” Generation & Millennials

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

© April 18, 2015

A READER RESPONDS TO “The Beauty of Open Exchange”:

Dr. Fisher, this is beautiful!

The ease of the flow is a tapestry developing into a colorful, complete word picture. 

I admire your willingness to examine thoroughly this topic so dear to your very spirit.  Whether a specter, a phenomenon, the conflicting articles of faith presented by each of the religious sects among your considerations we all have wrestled with...I for one, always seem to return to "The light of the world is Jesus." 

Yet, there are so many "ways" to consider: The frightening 8 teachings of Augustine of hippo combined with the heaven and hell theories, the "good works" theory of St. James and his love of the parables of Jesus stand out as two of the contrasts. 

Love your use of the old catechism pictures.  Those old lithographs have a beauty of their own.  We acquired a set from the 1920's that still hold the fullness of color and beauty.  Of course, as you said, "Catholic" around the world differs so greatly.  

Our catechism at St. Mary's never contained those lovely pictures, only the fear and dread of hell fires, mainly.  Until I experienced the Sisters of St. Francis did I feel the joy, joy, joy of religion.  

Although one sister of the BVM, our 8th grade teacher, was full of the spirit of God and overflowed with his glory.  Very similar to our precious Sister Gertrude from Mount St. Clare whose example made you want to be as good as she. 

Just to let you know I am still working on the culture of death book, even though it may never go to print, it is leading me into still and mighty waters of discovery. 

How small is mankind in the whole.  From the first use of tools and musical instruments to today's tech and music, man is bound to his limitations. 

How we dispose of our dead should not be earth shaking but taking me to unexpected realms, a journey bordered by myth, religion and feasibility. 

Be well, viva or to be more precise, "To Life." 

RW

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

You are most kind, but with that kindness I blame you for stimulating a bit of nostalgia.  

I agree we are a small planet, small in our accomplishments, which we tend to exaggerate while minimizing the depth and breadth of what we are, have been, but seem to be forgetting if we ever knew. 

The “Me” and “X” generations as well as the New Millennials are blameless in this because they know nothing else.  This, however, gives me pause.  

As you know, I write about Sister Gertrude in my book, IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003).

My purpose in putting out segments of the "Jesus Story" (of which your reference comments are a part) is to get a sense of readers' interest in the story, not only the story they have been told, but the story as it has been viewed down through the ages by scholars, historians, cultural connoisseurs and everyday people like ourselves. 

Many young people today, it is sad to report, believe in nothing, and in believing in nothing they are remiss in realizing it is impossible to believe in anything.  

Nihilism once was a popular philosophy but it didn’t get believers out of their chairs. 

Being at least a decade older than you, and perhaps because I am reminiscent of that heritage alluded to here, my desire is to secure that history by embracing not moving away from its murky aspects or premature extinction. 

The underpinning of our culture is the supportive foundation of everything that we are and do today.

It detracts not one iota that that culture is an elaborate filigree of myth, magic, mystery and the miraculous. 

We live not only in our bodies but in our minds as well, and our minds are fueled by our spirit. 

Our spirit is the tapestry of our arts, but also of our sciences.  It is what secures us in the beauty of being human, Godly, loving and engaged. 

BB read what you have said here and was moved by it, as was I.  You must write that book!

People who know me from my youth often say, "I never knew you'd turn out like this."  Nor did I. 

It is my belief that writers are born to write.  If you are not born with this particular genetic DNA, and you do write, chances are you will become a journalist.

When I was a boy, not yet a teenager, during the WWII years, Clinton, Iowa was like an extravaganza, a motion picture in my head. 

Clinton was a small, vibrant, totally engaged industrial Mississippi River town of 33,000 working 24/7 to support the war effort. 

Clinton was a beautiful town, clean, well-kept streets and well-kept parks with vistas in every direction displaying postcard allure.

Clinton had beautiful architecturally splendid churches, at least five Lutheran and three times that many of other Protestant denominations, as well as five Catholic Churches, five Catholic parochial schools, three Catholic high schools including a convent and college for the Sisters of St. Francis, and convent and high school for the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  

It was a Christian town and not self-conscious for being so.

Today, many of the Protestant Churches are gone, abandoned or in ill repair.  There is only one Catholic Church and a single k-12 Catholic school, no college or convent, but a home for retired nuns.

During the Second World War, Clinton couldn't have been more festive looking during the Christmas Holiday Season with the beautiful downtown business district decked out to the fullest, and the Iten Display on Bluff Boulevard an eye catching sight that brought thousands to Clinton from across the Midwest.

Entertainment was grade school and high school sports, the Industrial Baseball League in the summer, played in one of the most attractive baseball stadiums in towns of Clinton's size in Riverview Park. 

It was not uncommon to have 3,000 fans at a baseball game, or 2,000 fans at a high school football game, while high school basketball games were played in gymnasiums filled to the rafters.  I know because I attended these sports, and later would play in these arenas.

Parents and their children listened to the radio together with such programs as Amos & Andy, Fibber McGee & Molly, Fred Allen, and Jack Benny. 

The Clinton Herald, the community newspaper, was informative at the international, national and community level, and entertaining as good writing was endemic to its design. 

Why am I being so nostalgic?  

Perhaps because all of this authenticity has been replaced by the synthetic, the artificial, the expedient and the impersonal. 

Someone was raving to me about Las Vegas.  I confessed it was a place I had never been and never planned to visit.  He came back saying "it is the envy of Paris with better shopping and a more diverse ambience than Paris at far less the cost." As if the authentic can be replaced by the synthetic at any cost!

In our "cut and control" mania, we seldom reflect on what has been lost for what has been gained.  What is lost is lost forever. 

The Clinton Herald newspaper, its atrophying news print presses not economically salvageable, forced the newspaper to farm out the printing of the newspaper to Davenport, Iowa thirty-eight miles away. 

Downtown Clinton today is something approaching a ghost town.  The beautiful parks have been cemented over as parking lots for automobiles that no longer visit the downtown area.

Department store buildings, some designed by such celebrated architects as Louis Henry Sullivan (Van Allen Building) are standing like mere skeletons as reminders of the glorious past. 

We have our laptops, cell phones, iPhones, and other electronics; we have the Internet which makes this medium available to me to write these words, and if you are of the "X" generation or the New Millenniums, you have no idea what has been lost, and for that you are lucky. 

What has this got to do with the "Jesus Story"? 

Everything and nothing.  Writers live their lives in that mysterious conundrum of myth and magic, and try to make sense of the paradox. 

*     *     *

 

THE "JESUS STORY" CONTINUES -- READERS SOUND OFF!

The Beauty of Open Exchange:

The “Jesus Story” Unfolds

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

© April 18, 2015

PREAMBLE

First of all, I appreciate all responses, and although I may differ with the respective points of view, I respect them for having the courage to express them.  As long as people are talking about subjects that concern them, there is the possibility of developing common ground.  

No one is without opinions, but not everyone has the courage to express those opinions without being angry, volatile or defensive.  Better to express one’s opinions frequently and politely than infrequently and violently.

Many of us were reared by parents who told us that we should never discuss religion, politics or race with anyone, and we see where that has gotten us.  I applaud people with a point of view who can express it calmly with empathy.

------------------------------------------

It is not surprising to me that many reading me, and they number in the thousands thanks to this blog, find the "Jesus Story" clashes with what they have been taught to believe.

Clearly, in this odyssey, I am attempting to relate the “Jesus Story” to these most challenging times.  

My search is by a complete amateur in the field of theology and eschatology, and therefore must depend on scholars who have dedicated their lives to understanding the historical significance of the "Jesus Story" in terms of the rise of Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism. 

After 70 C.E., there was no longer a Second Temple in Jerusalem, no longer archives of Jewish history, no longer Judaism as it was known>  Nor was there any sign of the Jesus Movement as everyone connected with it had fled to safety.

It was some forty years since the Crucifixion of Jesus.  During that period, James the brother of Jesus had essentially taken over the movement as Apostle Peter proved not to be the rock upon which Jesus had claimed to be building his church.

Apostle Paul, who never met Jesus, but had been hunting and persecuting Christians for three years after the death of Jesus, experienced a conversion in 33 C.E., and thereafter became a vigorous proselytizers of the Christian faith throughout the Gentile World.

To this day, despite the propaganda of the Four Gospels which prove an advertisement for the new faith of Christianity, the only extant records of any reliability are the Letters of St. Paul.  Most Christian and Jewish scholars are in agreement on this.

It is apparent from my research, and it is still on going, that scholars are not in agreement on many issues, yet one thing is clear.

Christianity was born because man in his fragile nature fearing “the end of days” needed a new religion, and that need was exploited in a twisted fashion, and cleverly so, surviving persecution, ostracism and incredible hardship.

Christianity has been political from its beginning with Emperor Constantine seizing that advantage early in the fourth century to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. 

THE PARADOX OF ST. PAUL

No less erratic, more troubled soul or more compelling personality was that of St. Paul who changed everything.  He would become the improbable yet most influential acolyte that Christianity would ever have with his exhortation of love in 1 Corinthian 13. 

Love is the most powerful and most important virtue in all of humanity.  St. Paul created with this tiny masterpiece a document of love for literature and psychology, but especially for Christian theology.

The problem with Paul's "love chapter" is that he focuses on, indeed, implies that love of others comes before loving of ourselves.  

But love comes only from a loving heart, not an angry or damaged heart, for without a healthy love center within, love without cannot be authentic.

This love contradiction has muddied the waters for twenty centuries, and in a most modest way, my books and essays have been like the salmon swimming upstream against the current attempting to alert readers to that fact.   

When love is a manipulative device, it becomes a device of power.  It becomes political.  That fact is demonstrated in a series of exchanges received from readers, who find themselves in this "love trap" that haunts us all.  

Disguised in these exchanges is buried love which I doubt even occurs to these authors that they are exchanging letters of love.  We cannot help ourselves from being loving, wherever we are, whoever we are, to not be loving for behind our defensiveness, anger, even our self-justification is always buried love. 

A READER WRITES: 

Dr. Fisher reads as a very confused writer and at times is hard to follow as to his purpose. He appears to be reading opinions of a list of writers that are just as confused and are strongly opinionated.

The Holy Scripture is a book that was written by men who were inspired by God the message God gave to mankind. It is without error in the original language and reveals a plan for mankind to be forgiven and receive eternal life with God.

There isn't any myth recorded in the Scripture and it is offensive to any Christian for anyone to claim that there is.

It is my prayer that Dr. Fisher is a believer and has been “born again.”

His writing is not clear where he stands on the Scripture as being the inerrant Word of God written by Men who were inspired by God in truth and detail.

This is in contrast with the books that men wrote about the Scripture giving their opinion about myth and history.

I have had men in my ministry try to prove the Scripture to be in error and while doing so were led to believe it is undeniably true and were "born again." As always, agree to agree or agree to disagree.

Respectfully

R.R.J.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Mr. R.R.J.,

The people I have referenced are historians and scholars from our most celebrated academic institutions in the Western World, people who make it their business to follow the facts wherever they take them.  If I am confused, so are they.

Faith and belief have nothing to do with facts.  If faith and belief are enough, so be it.

In Search for the Real Parents of My Soul is my own social psychological and private odyssey.  At my advanced age, I question much that I have been taught, and feel I have a right to investigate the soundness of that teaching. 

All my life, I have looked at what I was doing, how I was doing it, why I was doing it, and what contributed to my doing so with directness, and with unabashed courage. 

My books on corpocracy (i.e., the suspect practices of the corporation) reflect this; my book on Christianity is in that same vein. 

Religion needs to evolve in understanding the same way as every other aspect of human existence.   Nothing is without error that is derived from human creation, nothing, and religion is perhaps the most human of institutions.

Spiritual integrity does not require miracles or beliefs that suspend the exploration of what makes sense and what does not. 

Christianity was "born again," if you prefer, after 70 C.E.  It is a religion with which I came into the world and which I have been programmed to believe.  It is my hope that it has room for this “Doubting Thomas.” 

A READER COMMENTS ON R.R.J.’s ASSERTIONS:

Yes, Mr. Jenkins has a right to his beliefs, but the irony is that he is the one confused and opinionated. 

I once read a book that listed the names of over 2000 gods that humans had and continued to create. His god is just one of the many. 

Another irony about his god is that this god is talked about as being a loving god.  That is a real joke.  He supposedly had Jesus sacrificed as human sacrifice, and then he decided to send all the world’s non-Christians to hell unless they became Christians.  Talk about love. 

That is the most twisted idea of love that has ever been expressed.  At the risk of repeating myself the god worshiped by the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims is one of the angriest characters ever invented. 

And that god was invented like all the other gods when dictatorship was the only form of government.  So naturally the god that was invented by the ruling class was also a dictator. 

I once thought about becoming a Lutheran minister, but fortunately I read Thomas Pain’s “The Age of Reason” which started me questioning, and my questioning has gone on ever since. 

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that R.R.J. does not have the answer.   

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Dear Questioning,

Please note that R.R.J. signs "Respectfully."  That is important.  I have no trouble with people with passionate points of view.  My problem is with the apathetic.

There was a time when I was a freshman at the University of Iowa, taking one of the required core courses called "Western Civilization" that I was a person very much like Mr. Jenkins.

Dr. Halmi was already lecturing the class in Western Civilization as I entered the amphitheater of some 300 or so students.  I heard him castigate the Roman Catholic Church with a storm of invectives that was too much for my sensitive ears.  

I left the class and immediately dropped the course having taken the professor's remarks as a personal insult to my beliefs.

Four years later, I took the course again, and already my perspective was changing, but I was still a most devout Catholic. 

My sense is that many very nice people, very good people, very devout people will be disturbed with my book, but that is because, in my case, the Roman Catholic Church, and basic Christianity has not been honest with us about the historic Jesus or the early Christian Church.

My life, to this moment, is a constant surprise to me.  Having said that, I know I must give credit to my initial training for protecting me from making real bad choices in my life, choices that I may have made were I not to have had that training.

R.R.J. has every right to his beliefs, and had I not been so rushed at the time, I would have applauded him for making the effort to communicate his feelings. 

QUESTIONING READER RESPONDS:

I find this discussion interesting because it all comes down as it always does to the human desire for certainty.  

When you tell a true believer of Christianity that his or her beliefs are no different than the Greek myths, they are incensed.  As long as that person can believe the Christian myth, that person feels certain and secure.  

As children we can eventually give up the belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, but many adults still need to believe in something that is the equivalent of Santa and the Easter Bunny.

The conclusion to which I have come is that there is no certainty.  As I have said before we are limited by our perceptions and some people apparently need  to believe in an adult version of Santa or the Easter Bunny.  

Religion may preach morality but throughout history has failed to act on its teachings.  Many people are moral have no need for religion.  As I also have said many times if you want to worship something that is fine by me.  It only bothers me when those people want everyone to believe as they do.

On another issue that hinges into all this is free will.  Physicists can now determine through mathematical calculation if an object in space will hit or miss us.  

Therefore, if it were possible to accumulate all the data in the universe about everything  then you would be able to predict that I would read these emails tonight and type this missive.  E.O. Wilson recently said free will is an illusion, and we need to believe in that illusion for our survival.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS

I don't think people are so concerned about certainty, but more concerned about meaning, or what is life all about?

Religion is sanctuary for that meaning, and yes, it has been disrupted, fragmented and often dispatched by both modernity and postmodernity.

You mention science and mathematics, the cognitive side of our consciousness, that aspect that has rotated meaning to the Gospel of Science that has become the new religion, as clearly practiced by E. O. Wilson and his ilk.

They make a statement, such as the one you quote, and you take it as gospel because of who and what E. O. Wilson is, and what he represents.

Mythology exists in science masquerading as definitive laws that can be proved by mathematics or physics, only to be disproved later by new data.  Einstein did that to Newton, but Newton was not castigated for being so assertive in his day, indeed, his theses ruled for 300 years.

The danger of being misunderstood in my odyssey ( "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul") troubles me for I am not interested in denying the relevance of Christianity or Judaism, but I am asking myself, and by extension the reader to consider the value and moral authority of our Christian/Judaic culture in the context of the present.

Jesus is very real to me, and the early Christian movement that resulted in a catholic or universal religion is impressive in its development and ability to survive ambiguities and the cultural ambivalence of man throughout the ages.

Jesus was a Jew, and early Christian writers did everything to minimize this fact, and to charge Judaism for his death on the cross, which was not true at all.

I disagree with you that people are moral without religion.  People can be moral without a church, but not without religion.

A religion is a set of values that dignifies and celebrates human existence, not any special race or group, but all of humankind.

As for free will, I suggest you read or reread Arthur Schopenhauer's "Love and Will," where he recognizes the limits and yes advantages to love and will.

In my long life, I have found the Roman Catholicism in which I was born, a religion often more interested in its political survival than its spiritual mission, a church I have experienced in many parts of the world, a very flawed human institution, that has had only two popes that I have admired, Pope John XXIII and the current Pope Francis I, for they both personify the essential nature of love.

Before I met and married Betty Ann, best in the land, I realized that I had never loved; that I knew nothing about love.  She has been my teacher, and as a consequence, I find nothing more powerful or more fulfilling than love.

Religions, indeed, churches and synagogues, often espouse love but worry too much about your referenced certainty.  There is no certainty.

With love, however, there is meaning and with that meaning it is sufficient.

As always, it is a delight to hear from you.

   

ANOTHER RESPONDS TO R.R.J.’s DECLARATION:

Far be it from me to change people’s mind about religion.  But it would be wise for everybody, religious or not to be open-minded.  May I suggest people take a look at just as one example? 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman#Career

Then we might ask ourselves, who knows better?

Best to all,

YET ANOTHER COMMENT TO THIS MATTER

Dr. Fisher,

I am not a scholar of the Bible and have not read all the preceding thoughts on this subject that you cover, but for me, I find that the Bible is a source of history, comfort, wonder and  more importantly to me,  a connection to my spirituality in this great big world I live in.  Any of us may consider it "inerrant".  I do not, but it does not change my connection to my God.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS WITH AN EPILOGUE TO THIS RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION